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Probably one of the most important decisions a writer can make is to decide on (and stick to) a narrative voice through which to tell the story. The narrative voice will include two elements, each of which must be consistent throughout the story-telling process. The first is point of view, and the second is verb tense.

I recently read the above paragraph, and I'm confused about why the author used "will" in the above paragraph. Is the above paragraph written in narrative mode? If I had to write the paragraph, I would write the following instead. Would my choice of verb in the paragraph below be incorrect? Thank you for your help!

Probably one of the most important decisions a writer can make is to decide on (and stick to) a narrative voice through which to tell the story. The narrative voice includes two elements, each of which must be consistent throughout the story-telling process. The first is point of view, and the second is verb tense.

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    The author is predicting what the reader's "authorial voice" will be like, which is a losing game because the author really doesn't know who the reader is nor what their inner voice sounds like. And the idea that the "voice" is composed of "verb tense" is, frankly, ridiculous. Don't trust anything this author has to say about writing.
    – John Lawler
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 19:48
  • These are maxims, reminders which need bear no propositional relationship to their subject; they are meaningful to people who already know what they mean in practise but are of no use to anybody else.
    – StoneyB on hiatus
    Commented Oct 24, 2013 at 21:39

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Will has several uses. One of them is to say what is likely to be happening now. Another is to describe some kind of recurrent behaviour. The writer could be using it here for either purpose or for both.

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I think the writer is implying something like "In authoring a narrative voice you will need to include two elements..." But your version is more correct in my opinion. The author made a mistake regarding verb tense in his/her instruction about verb tense - that will be ironic!

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