After you have completed your research work, your work is still far from completion. This is the final stage but still important and time consuming as writing up your research may be one of the most difficult tasks of a project. The final report should be concise, good and effective and that is a task in itself. When you start to work on your report, these are some of the general considerations that you must keep in your mind:
Your Readers: Who is going to be the audience for your report? The content and depth of your report will vary according to the expertise and intellectual capital of your readers and the purpose with which your reader is going to be reading it. Sometimes the audience may just want a summary of results and sometimes you have to write for clearing a PhD exam. Whatever it is, keep your reader in mind.
The concept: Every research project has a major concept on which the report rests. It is a good idea to weave the concept in the form of a story for the reader to find it engrossing. This is even possible for very formal reports, where a good story line can actually lift up the interest rating of an otherwise dull and boring report. It is a very difficult proposition for a report, which otherwise is filled with facts and findings and you want to tell all those to the reader because you have done a lot of hard work for it. But, if you view the research from the perspective of the audience, you would find it better to let go of some details that may be very dear to you, and find place for them in the technical appendices or tables, if necessary.
Formatting: In the beginning itself, if you are aware and careful about the phd thesis formatting considerations and guidelines of the university/journal/book for which you are doing the research, then it is easy to get your work accepted. There are examples and stories that tell us, that the best of work was rejected because of poor formatting or labeling done by the writer.
If you begin the expression of your research, in context to writing, with these aspects kept in mind, it would be easier for you to create a document that would be acceptable and appreciated by all.