Sy skryf haar eie storie.

It is a very straightforward sentence:

• Sy = she
• skryf = writes / is writing
• haar = her
• eie = own
• storie = story

So the structure is basically She writes her own story.

Because sy is the subject pronoun meaning she. It is used for the person doing the action.

Haar is used for her, either:

• as a possessive word: her
• or as an object pronoun: her

In this sentence, the woman is doing the writing, so Afrikaans uses sy: Sy skryf ... = She writes ...

Here, haar is a possessive determiner, meaning her.

It belongs with eie storie:

• haar storie = her story
• haar eie storie = her own story

So in this sentence, haar does not mean the object pronoun her. It means her in the sense of possession.

Eie means own.

It adds emphasis:

• haar storie = her story
• haar eie storie = her own story

So yes, eie matters if you want the meaning own. Without it, the sentence would lose that extra sense of independence or contrast.

Because Afrikaans, like English, normally does not use an article together with a possessive.

You say:

• haar storie = her story

Not:

• haar 'n storie

The possessive haar already determines the noun, so no 'n or die is needed there.

Afrikaans verbs are much simpler than English verbs in the present tense. The verb usually stays the same for all persons:

• Ek skryf = I write
• Jy skryf = you write
• Sy skryf = she writes
• Ons skryf = we write

So unlike English, Afrikaans does not usually add a special -s form for he/she/it.

It can often mean either, depending on context.

So Sy skryf haar eie storie could mean:

• She writes her own story
• She is writing her own story

If Afrikaans wants to make the ongoing action extra clear, it can use a longer form such as:

Sy is besig om haar eie storie te skryf.

But the short sentence is completely natural.

Yes. This sentence uses the basic subject–verb–object order:

• Sy = subject
• skryf = verb
• haar eie storie = object

So it works very much like English: She writes her own story.

That said, Afrikaans word order changes in some other sentence types, especially after certain sentence openings or in subordinate clauses.

It is capitalized only because it is the first word of the sentence.

In the middle of a sentence, it would normally be sy, not Sy.

So:

• Sy skryf haar eie storie.
• Ek weet dat sy haar eie storie skryf.

Yes. Storie is very close to English story, both in form and meaning.

That is common in Afrikaans: many words are easy for English speakers to recognize, even if the spelling is slightly different.

Also:

• singular: storie
• plural: stories

Not in the noun storie. Afrikaans does not have grammatical gender for nouns in the way some other European languages do.

The female meaning comes from the pronouns:

• sy = she
• haar = her

So the sentence refers to a female person, but storie itself is not a grammatically feminine noun.