OK, I would go with the consensus of most others on here

"It was only after her discovery of Design that she fell in love." or "Only after her discovery of Design did she fall in love."

The latter using more poetic license as canjowolf stated, though bzipser is absolutely correct on the context used.

You could have used, "After discovering Design, she fell in love with it." This assumes it was Design she fell in love with, as your sentence is also ambiguous (did she find love in Design, did she find a man after discovering Design, did she find a beautiful puppy which became the logo of her company ??? )

I have to say your GD teacher was right ... sorry Dalara

Oh, and the rest of your paragraph needs work too

EDIT: Next time submit your paragraph on here before you submit it

I'd already formed my answer before reading Farland's post. Those two options are exactly what I would have said.

Thanks guys for all of the replies.

I like some of the alternatives given. However, I still must say that I can't see anything wrong with the sentence. I can't comprehend why its ambiguous. If it was a sentence fragment, or a part of another sentence, then I could understand the ambiguity. As it stands, because it is part of the same sentence, I don't understand how it can be seen any other way.

Is it perhaps because people don't speak like that? Does it make them lose sight of what is being said? I've found that my writing style, sometimes, comes out a bit more flowery (for good or bad) than anyone really speaks in real life. So I can see that causing problems for some people.

Now after having read the sentence a few more times, I can see that the "did she fall in love" part sounds more like a question. In that case, it should be changed. That, to me is more of a style change (I guess). I still have trouble with the names of things in the grammar system, but I can see error's in grammar better than I used to.

Oh and I do still have trouble with past and present tense (so yes, there is that issue). However, I will say that I do not see the big deal in sticking strictly to one or the other. I can read both mixed into a body of writing and have no problem. The way I see it, in a novel at least, is it doesn't matter if its past tense or present, because the reader will assume the whole story is happening at the same moment they are reading it. Thus the need for either is greatly diminished.

Edit: If anyone isn't clear, I still am looking for feedback on the above and the reason for this thread. Maybe this is unnecessary, but the internet has its way of making a simple statement flip on its head - thus why I clarify.

Delara, I think if you are writing for yourself and seperate tenses on the fly that is all good, but when you are writing for others (especially if it is for marks), then you need to stick to convention

I liked how how it was poetic, but stand that it was ambiguous (of course, if it was in a poem, then that doesn't matter as it's about pentameter, license and rhythm).

And it is definitely grammatically incorrect; it and she are the subjects of two different clauses. You could not diagram that sentence in a meaningful way, if anyone remembers how to diagram sentences.

And mixing present and past tenses can be done -- in carefully limited ways, with appropriate uses of simple and perfect tenses and with relevance to what the relationship in time is of the things that are being talked about. It is not something to be done carelessly.

Almost all novels are written past tense, though the dialog in them may be in whatever tense is appropriate for the conversation. A few books, and many pbp games, are written present tense, but for games that tends to be because the writers are really in the midst of the action.

The bolded sentence is clumsily phrased, sorry to say, if it's correct enough at all. Because you take pride in your writing, you would probably want to edit that sentence. The sentence appears to be a product of your rushed writing, and would benefit greatly from editing and rearrangement. Phrase your sentences directly, with actor (subject), verb, object, in order, for better impact, understandability, and parrallelism (matching the expected sentence structure from sentence to sentence, to be comfortable for the reader with regular clues instead of tricky changes of phrasing). "It was" and "Did she" are both unnecessarily tricky to parse.

In journalism, that sentence structure is generally not accepted. In fiction it might be Ok.

Corrected for how you might write it in journalism:

OLD VERSION: It was only after her discovery of Design did she fall in love.

EDITED ALTERNATE VERSIONS:

She fell in love, after discovering Design.

After discovering design, she fell in love.

She did not fall in love until after discovering Design.

She fell in love only after discovering Design.

Ooh! Sentence diagramming!

Subject verb (object phrase) verb subject verb (object phrase). As bzipser said, there are two complete independent clauses in this sentence, so a coordinating conjunction (or some properly constructed punctuation) needs to replace the extra verb (did) to make the sentence grammatically correct.

"It was only after her discovery of Design that she fell in love." or "Only after her discovery of Design did she fall in love."

Agree with this, though not sure why we're capitalizing design. May have missed it in the the OP or the thread.

Design is being treated as a noun rather than a verb.

Dont know the level of work this is for but in my class it would be just fine.