Look if anyone in your institution has created a dissertation template for LaTeX, or if you can use one [from elsewhere](https://github.com/briandealwis/ubcdiss). I personally found the formatting to be the hardest part, not the actual writing, especially since you can find helpers for various text editors, like LaTeXTools for Sublime etc.

As pointed out elsewhere in this thread, don't make your hammer solve all of the problems.