Hi @madilyn02. Thank you for sharing your story in The Ink Well. What happened to Nne was very sad!

We have some tips for you. The first tip is about resolutions to stories. The resolution is the end of the conflict. Readers always look for this in a story, and it is the way to show us how the story's conflict ends. This is also an important component of the story arc. (See those links for articles in our Catalog of Storytelling Tips to learn more.)

In this case, we learn that Nne has a life threatening illness and may die. This is a very dramatic story conflict. But we are never told if she survives the illness, so the conflict is not resolved. This is an unsatisfying experience for the reader.

The second tip is about including lessons in your stories. We advise against providing a "moral" or any kind of instruction to your readers in your stories. The reason is that readers do not come to stories to be taught anything. We provide information on this in the list of tips and reminders that we share in each of our newsletters, such as the recent newsletter for September. Here's a screenshot of that section:

And the third lesson is about author intrusion. A story is about the characters. Readers want to be involved in the story. Think of sitting in a comfortable chair, reading a good book. You are not expecting the author of the book to appear out of nowhere and explain something to you about the story, or what you should learn from it. This is what we call author intrusion. This is mentioned in the newsletter section in the screenshot above as well, and you can click the link here to go to our article on that topic.

We hope these tips are helpful! Good luck and keep writing!