I'm a total noob, just starting to learn how to model in DAZ and preparing to maybe get my feet wet in a VN - and I can't say anything for or against all the nice tools mentioned above.
What i can say though - is that in my own mind - I have a hard time learning ways of doing things that someone else developed. I have to develop my own methods, because i have learned over the years, that my brain just works different.. lol. No.. I am not retarded
I just process information in a more intuitive manner. So I find it easier to learn by doing, then when I run into a problem, find out how to fix it. Often times, there's several ways to do something, and the people doing each one will tend to argue that their way, is the ONLY way to do it. Heck, just try and learn lighting in DAZ! I lost track of the different methods people have posted... each one the best one, lol.
I've been playing around with different ways to manage my work flow, and I have to say that i am starting to feel comfortable with using Excel for 90% of the work right now. Of course, I've got some experience with MS Office, so that helps, but honestly, IMO, a spreadsheet is ideal for VN development, since it's a pretty linear process. I am writing a script using Word, and I can send that text to my excel sheet. My Excel work sheets automatically generate the render filenames, and keep track of what scenes I have composed, rendered and sent through post processing. It all uses conditional formatting so it's color coded and I can see at a glance what is done, and what still needs to be done. The dialogue is in the same tables and a macro keeps my word count updated. Major story forks and choices are tracked by a simple code I made. I even have tables in this workbook that keep track of all the camera angles in every scene, so that if I lose some work product or screw something up 6 months down the road, I can recreate the exact same shot using my archived scene DUF's.
It's working pretty good for me, and I back everything up on my Google Cloud account.
I'm also a cheap bastard, and everything I use is either free or really cheap. For example, you can get a full licensed Office 2022 Pro Suite for $12, for a single use OEM key. And Google, of course, is free.. and it comes with 15GB of cloud storage. More then enough for a single project. Not to mention, you get 5GB of free storage on your MS account. and it's real-time synced to your computer with One Drive.