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I use an outlining tool, More, to create tables of content. When I work top
down, I look at chapter titles (are they consistent? can I distinguish
between them? Is the order meaningful?) and then after a while, I move down
to first level heads within chapters, asking the same questions. On another
day, I start bottom up, asking the most picky questions under my 4th level
heads, and gradually, as I understand things, putting them together, grouping
them, linking them in sequence, building up to a 3rd level head... and so on.