For the stuff I've written, the tools for outlining, story boards, and first drafts have always been yellow legal pads, a box of rollerball pens, and PostIt notes for rearranging things. Ideas just seem to flow more freely through a pen on paper, for me, at least. Once it's actually out of my head and in my hands, then the PC word processor can do the spell checking and final editing and revisions. Kind of old fashioned, I guess, but when I first started writing research papers and short stories, I had an Underwood manual typewriter, and I only wanted to have to type up the final revision once.