As game designers, what kind of template would you recommend in order to plan and structure a game project? I'm mostly looking for a sort of fill-in-the-blanks document. I need this in order to structure my personal projects (Which would be small), and get over the whole "I'll wing it" mentality. Also can you recommend any books on the subject of game planning/design?

Check the resources section of Gamedev, plenty of useful stuff to find there.

For the design documents:
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/list.asp?categoryid=23#121

I personally used Chris Crawford's one. I tried to use it that is, I'm afraid I'm more of a "wing it" character. :)

As for the game design books, the one I found most useful was a "Theory of Fun for Game Design", which uses a "low level" (to use the programming jargon) approach to human psychology and fundamental elements of games. You can't go wrong with the other top rated books in the category either:

http://www.gamedev.net/columns/books/books.asp?CategoryID=2

Thanks :).

This isn't the template that I started with, but it's not too bad:

http://forums.xna.com/forums/t/229.aspx

I'm telling you that even though there are templates, once you kind of write this one, or at least get aways into it, you'll see the general idea and start writing them from scratch. At least, that's what I did.

Also, I just bought the book "The Ultimate Guide to Video Game Writing and Design" off of Amazon and though it hasn't gotten here yet, it sounded like what I needed. I don't know if it'll help you, but it's a place to start.