I am studying the art of documentary making, so I find your question interesting. I am not an expert. I just want to share what I have learnt on the subject. Basically a documentary project is similar to that of a fiction, in terms of the shooting techniques. It is all about the light, the pictures and the sound. You should not take this lightly. Go for the great pic; record a great sound and you will dramatically enhance your production outcome. Do not envisage something that you wouldn't be able to show. Where fiction and documentary do part is how you write them. In a fiction you can set about writing the dialogues of your characters, as well as dictate them how they act. But with a documentary, you can't know in advance what a character will say. You may have an idea through your researches, but it can not be accurate. So depending on the type of documentary you are working on, you can start shooting straight away (experimental documentaries, based on observation) or go first into the footage stock libraries to find what visuals evidence you have available for your project (historic documentaries. Every writing as such comes after the visual evidence gathering stage. There is no way round that when you deal with documentary. However, if you want to reconstruct a scene for your documentary, you should be able to write a script as with a fiction project. I am working right now on a documentary project and I am more than happy to invite you to collaborate with me. It is my first project and I am going for it as a way to get to practice.

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