My experience has been somewhat to the contrary.
Blow-by-blow descriptions of combat tend to get bogged down in a lot of details. They can also suffer from timing issues since from a game-perspective, everyone moves in rotation but that usually makes for really hard reading since the reader can have a hard time following what's going on as the "camera" hops around so much. I remember reading some of Turtledove's work on the lizard invasion where the focus character shifted every few pages and I found it a tiring read in the same way, and enjoyed some of the later books in that series more where he cut the number of "main" characters and stayed on each for longer periods.
My experience is also that swing-swing-swing-swing doesn't make for much of an interesting story. At one point in the prior story hour, I was doing exactly that. Eventually I realized that it was a story hour - emphasis on the word
story and it should read like a story, rather than a court-reporter record of the night's D&D game.
As a result over the years, I've drifted away from highly detailed combat descriptions. In part due to reading the works of authors I find far better - Destan for instance - and in part from just learning to write better (to me). Stories revolve around dramatic tension, and character development. While combat is useful for both, there are lots of other things that are as well, and the
mechanics of combat usually just serve to diminish rather than heighten the drama. Not to mention my notes are usually not good enough for that much detail
All that said, I'm sure it can be done, and I'm sure it can be done well. But I have found it to be not-so-great for my personal style of writing. My twin goals for the story hour have always been a) to tell an entertaining story and b) to serve as a substantively accurate account of the game which we can refer to later for reference (something both players and DM have needed to do). I'm usually able to serve both goals at the same time. There are times I favor the good story a little higher and
lie take some artistic discretion with the events but it's usually something that while adding flavor to the story was not a "substantive" alteration. But again, it's my feeling that BBB descriptions rarely serve those goals, at least for me.
