I just ran across a writing program called Campfire. It is allegedly a revolutionary new writing and planning program, but since I don't really use writing and planning programs I was wondering if anyone had any experience with it and could say whether or not it's on par with similar applications. Most of the reviews I've seen just read like long form adverts, so I'm wary of trusting them. There's a free trial, but the full version costs around 50$.
Dap, I'm not familiar with Campfire, but there's one I've seen called Speare. They have lots of in-depth YouTube tutorials under the name Speare if you want to take a look. (I don't use planning tools for fiction, either.)
I used to fall into the trap of planning too much in advance with fancy tools, getting into smaller and smaller details, making 3D models of the whole neighborhood... It just complicated things when changes where needed and contradictions piled up. Most of the information wasn't relevant to the story anyway. Then I made the details more fuzzy with room for interpretation and left gaps intentionally, which made the stories better at not over-explaining like a patent application. A template can help to get the general idea of a character, but it should be alive in your mind, not a fact sheet to point at.
We all have different processes, and none of them is right or wrong. If it works for the writer, it works. I rarely plan at all, aside from knowing my characters, who usually arrive fairly fully formed. But for those who want to plan, there are great tools available.
I find it quite useful. Personally, I get lost in ideas, scenes, backstories, details and forget what I told back then and what I was going to tell next so often. Campfire helped me organize and memorize all these things. Its only flaw is the unnecesarrily high price.