Not exactly; for the example file here I worked somewhat reverse from the process I was describing, as it’s more of a breakdown/analysis of someone else’s work. Tinderbox really excels at this - my breakdown was limited only by the extent of my Tbx knowledge and the time I spent on breaking down the article.
In contrast, for ‘upward outlining’ - taking the case of the outline I demonstrated in this other post - the raw text block that originated that outline might’ve started out something like this, a stream-of-thought musing:
I have some clarity in how I think about the moon, and how it relates to planets in general. I sense a metaphor in here that I’d like to flush out. Hmm, let me think about whether and how the potential metaphor might scale. Is there a correlation to our solar system vis-a-vis the galaxy? Are we (as in the earth and other planets) simply circling some other larger planetary body? Is that larger body itself simply circling something bigger, and so on ad infinitum? And then everything circling a black hole, that swallows and digests us and centuries later, spits us out as just that much planetary graffiti?
And how does this thought scale downward? Do we - individuals, communities - tend to circle other more prominent individuals, shadowing/eclipsing/swallowing others in our zeal? Do those prominent individuals themselves, seeking a greater significance, circle more prominent individuals who in turn orbit black holes (myths, legends, beliefs)? What does it all mean? Am I just sleep-deprived tonight? Or hungry?
From this musing, I might then extract a variety of metaphors and analogies; as well, I might do a bit of web-browsing and/or scanning my existing Tinderbox data set for other bits and pieces I might want to glom on to the initial thought. Therefore, it would be a process of adding clay as I intuit exactly what will go into the final design. Along the way, I will naturally generate excess - which itself may be useful in a different project; this excess is squirrelled away in Tbx Notes and suitably annotated for future access and deployment. The process of ‘outlining upward’ is that effort; it’s a sort of incremental formalization, but also incremental chaos creation to some extent.
Hope this clarifies.