How can we expect to believe Joseph’s story when his accounts of the First Vision have so many inconsistencies?

In reality, even people who recount true stories will do so differently with each telling, and those stories aren’t much more consistent than for people who are telling lies. Taken as a whole, Joseph does add and omit a lot of material in his first-hand accounts, and there are some contradictions, but even if you stack the deck in favor of the critics, consistency just isn’t a great way to tell truth from error.