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I have a science-fiction story I'm writing and it has a ton of fight scenes in it. However, I'm really bad at writing them. How could I improve?

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Find novels and read fight scenes, especially ones you like, but read them analytically.

Do not get immersed in the reading. Look for the technicalities. How long or short are the sentences?

Same with the paragraphs. Same with any dialogue.

What descriptions are included, and what is left out?

How much does the description depend on the setting, and how much on the emotions, and how much on the physicality.

Are the moves described in detail, or not?

How long does the whole fight scene last?

How does it begin, before anybody takes a swing?

How does it end?

Dissect the fight scene. As an exercise, try to write a completely different fight scene, but mimicking the writer very closely. Change the genre, to scifi, or the Old West, or Comedy.

But stick closely to the original in word count per sentence, in description, in sentence length and in dialogue.

Reading to learn to write is completely different than reading for the fun of it. We reveal the rules of writing by reading analytically and not allowing our imagination to carry us away, but to understand how great authors engineer their writing so their great writing carries readers away.

All the materials you need to learn are on your bookshelf. Just approach them as an analyst, an archaeologist studying an artifact to understand how it was made, what it was used for, and why, exactly, does it have the shape that it does?

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