the imposter
Story by JESLEN
Reviewed by amber_rose

Title
The title has a pretty clear link to the story, so no issues there. I actually liked how it could refer to both the female leads at the same time, since the new Chae Won is supposedly the fake one after they had their faces swapped, but at the same time the original Chae Won was never the real McCoy in the first place. I thought it could have been a little less direct and more creative though, because it might not grab a reader’s attention as it is.

Description/Foreword
The description reads more like something I would see on a movie poster instead of on the back of a book. I suppose this is partly because your entire story is also written as if we’re meant to see it on a screen instead of in print? If it were on a movie poster, I’d think that its current form would have worked well but as a description to a written story it falls a bit short. A story description needs to give enough information to hook the reader, yet leave enough at bay so that people want to read the story in order to find out more. Your description doesn’t provide enough to tilt the balance and make me want to find out more about what you’ve written in the story. Also, it gives the impression that the story is a run-of-the-mill Korean soap opera which may or may not interest people. I think more could be done to highlight some unique features of the story so as to entice people to read more.

The choice of quotations that you’ve made for each of the characters is important because it gives the reader a glimpse into what they can expect from each of them. As it is, the quotes are not the most inspiring and do not flesh out their unique character traits sufficiently. I would have expected Shi Hoo’s quote to be something more assertive but it currently reflects uncertainty. Joongki’s quote just confuses me because even after reading the story I’m still not quite sure who he’s referring to and the whole concept of loving a person so much with no reason whatsoever borders on illogical (more on Joongki’s character will come in the Characterisation section).

There’s nothing much in the foreword, but I would suggest that you could consider including a snippet from the story itself that might raise some questions in readers’ minds and make them want to read further.

Plot
The plot of your story and the way it is written reminds me a lot of one of those hundred-odd episode daily Korean soap dramas. Fortunately (or unfortunately), the genre is quite familiar to me as I am quite the Korean drama, so hopefully I’ll be able to point out some areas where you’ve done well and other areas that can be improved.

The main plot of the story revolves around the mystery behind Chae Won’s identity and her current predicament, with the love lines between Chae Won, Shi Hoo and Joongki being a big part of the plot progression. You’ve done relatively well with weaving these different elements of the entire story together while still keeping some degree of suspense throughout. It’s good that you didn’t let the romance overshadow the main plot as many authors tend to do with long, chaptered stories. However, I’ve penalised you somewhat heavily because of the predictability and originality of the plot, which is the downside of having someone who’s familiar with Korean soap dramas reviewing your story. The entire premise of exchanging identities and having the female lead overcome adversity to win back her rightful place in life (and the handsome male lead along with that) is overused in the realm of dramas, which means that there needs to be something extra special in order to set your story apart from the rest. There haven’t been enough unexpected twists thus far to increase the originality of the plot. That being said, I still thought it was an interesting read and that people would probably appreciate the way the story flowed.

The story had a strong opening that helped with setting the scene for the rest of the story, so good job with that. Given that the surgery Chae Won went through was the key trigger that set the ball rolling for the rest of the story, it made sense for the entire story to begin at that point. Your use of flashbacks to showcase scenes that occurred prior to this point in time was a good way of allowing the story to progress while still giving the reader a glimpse into what happened at critical junctures in the past.

One major weakness in the plot lies with the premise behind Chae Won and Shi Hoo’s engagement. Chae Won’s father and the contract he had with the Parks played a significant role in the unfolding of the plot, however the reasoning behind this plot point was not explained very well, hence it came across as unconvincing. Supposedly Chae Won’s father took a loan from the Parks and because of that, they later insist on the engagement with the threat of withdrawing the loan. From the way that was explained, it sounded as though the Parks had the upper hand in the matter. If that was the case, why would they be so insistent on having Chae Won marry into the family? It made no sense that they would want her as a daughter-in-law so badly when it was not obvious what benefit this would bring to the Park family. Rich Korean families rarely want to be related to lesser families, much less one that is in debt to your family’s company. Unless you are able to give a solid reason to explain why Chae Won is so desired as a daughter-in-law, you would need to rethink the way you’ve portrayed the background behind the engagement.

The next missing piece in the puzzle that has not yet been unveiled is the reason behind why Chae Won and Gyuri needed to exchange faces in the first place. Gyuri was obviously behind it, but thus far we have not yet been introduced to the motivations behind her doing such a thing. My speculation is that since Gyuri knew Chae Won since they were children and stole the necklace from her, she also knew that Chae Won was the real deal right from the start and hence knowingly stole her place in the Moon family. However, Chae Won’s father got suspicious of her identity and started an investigation to search for his real daughter (based on the conversation between Gyuri and the lawyer during the scene), hence Gyuri plotted the temporary swap so that in the event when a DNA test was initiated, they would still pass the test given that Chae Won was the real McCoy after all. She could then get their faces swapped back and continue pretending to be Moon Chae Won, while the real Chae Won continued living in oblivion because of her lost memory. However, this would not explain why Joongki willingly helped Gyuri do such a thing when he would obviously not have been told of her real reasons for doing so. The reason she gave about having been beaten up by someone and then running away seems a little incredulous for Joongki to believe her. Also, for Gyuri to have initiated a second exchange of faces even before Chae Won’s father concluded his investigation seemed out of place, because the main driver behind her actions was supposed to be the fear of being discovered as a fraud and that loose end has yet to be tied up. It made no sense that she would have done that simply because she was jealous of the relationship between Chae Won and Shi Hoo, given that she obviously has no feelings for Shi Hoo either. In working towards the final reveal behind Gyuri’s face swap plan, you would need to ensure that there are no loopholes in the sequence of events and that the decisions made by the characters are grounded in valid reasoning.

As for the love lines, the relationship between Chae Won and Shi Hoo was better developed than between Chae Won and Joongki. In your review request you asked who the girl should end up with -- given the way the story is currently written, I have no qualms in telling you that it should be Shi Hoo. However, that does not necessarily need to be the case. The problem now is that Chae Won and Joongki’s relationship has not been given sufficient time and space for proper development as compared to Chae Won and Shi Hoo. There was a huge gap in the story when Joongki went missing and the spotlight was entirely on Shi Hoo -- that already set the stage for Shi Hoo winning the battle for the girl. When Joongki finally reappeared, his affections for Chae Won developed far too rapidly and without reason. Given that Joongki knew Gyuri as well and that she was the reason for him conducting the surgery in the first place, I would have expected him to be more conflicted and caught in between the two women, but he seemed to have fallen for Chae Won a little too easily. It would have helped if there were some scenes in between that showed more interaction between Chae Won and Joongki to help with the relationship progression on that front.

For Chae Won and Shi Hoo, their relationship progressed rather nicely and the pacing was about right. Shi Hoo’s change in opinions towards Chae Won made sense and could be easily explained as a result of the interactions that you portrayed between them, hence it worked a lot better than the Chae Won and Joongki relationship development. The only thing that bothered me (a lot) was the scene in the cottage where Shi Hoo supposedly pretended to Chae Won so as to save her from getting hypothermia. Even if Chae Won’s life was on the line, I would have thought that there were tons of other ways to save a person instead of doing something to obviously wrong and vile. From later chapters it becomes clearer that Shi Hoo isn’t actually such a bastard and that there is a warm and gooey personality lying underneath his cold exterior, so all the more he shouldn’t have had to make such a decision. Even slapping her repeatedly would have been better than what he did. The fact that she later forgave him and understood his reasons for doing such a thing confounded me even more, because I don’t think any woman would be able to come to terms with something like that. That aside, I am definitely in Shi Hoo’s camp right now.

Characterisation
In general there were hits and misses when it came to characterisation, with some characters being portrayed better than others. More can definitely be done in this department in order to make your story even more appealing to the reader, especially when it comes to ensuring consistency in the way your characters behave throughout the story.

Chae Won: I’m afraid I didn’t quite enjoy Chae Won’s character as much as I think I could have, mainly because she came across as slightly foolish at many points in the story. Also, the way she reacted towards her circumstances didn’t seem to make sense at parts. At the start of the story when Chae Won first came to her senses after the operation, her moment of insecurity and uncertainty was far too short in my opinion. If you wake up on a hospital bed with no recollection of who you were before that, it seems unlikely that you would immediately be so accepting of what people tell you. It would have made more sense of Chae Won showed a little more suspicion and doubt towards her surroundings at the beginning, instead of being so trusting towards people. That she would have fallen hook, line and sinker for her father’s act to get her to agree to the engagement was another example of when she was overly trusting, especially towards someone who had not showed her a single ounce of concern ever since she woke up from her surgery. Her initial reaction towards Shi Hoo when she first visited him at his office also didn’t seem to make logical sense. 

“She had walked inside that building filled with hope just to be crushed immediately by the same man whom she had instinctively trusted in her dreams.” 

Given that she had no recollection of this man, I would not have expected him to be able to trigger any strong emotions within her beyond a mild irritation, yet she was flying off the handle with rage just because he said he wouldn’t see her. Also, there was no reason for her to trust him so willingly even before she even met the man, just because someone else told her that they were engaged. There are several occasions when Chae Won exhibits extreme emotions that would have been better toned down a notch or two in order for her character to appear more real. It would make better sense for the stronger emotions to appear later on in the story when Chae Won gets better acquainted with Shi Hoo.      

Shi Hoo: I actually really liked Shi Hoo’s character. He had a very clear train of thought and his reactions and behaviours were the most consistent of all the characters. I thought the positioning of Chapter 14 was a particularly interesting look into his inner psyche, which was useful in helping your reader get to know him a little better. I had no idea what on earth was running through his mind during the ‘let me pretend to you so as to save your life’ scene (as mentioned earlier in the Plot section), but other than that there were no major issues with his character portrayal. What was done well for Shi Hoo but less well for Joonki was the progression of emotions. Shi Hoo’s feelings towards Chae Won evolved with time and with each interaction that they had, which made logical sense and hence felt more natural. One minor point is that the ‘circuit board for a brain and a computer for a heart’ description doesn’t quite work though.  

Joongki: Joongki’s character started off a little mysterious because he seemed nice on the surface, but it was also quite obvious that he had inner demons lurking within. That was a good start because it would make the reader curious to find out what it was that he was hiding. Also, it gave you a lot of room to play with in terms of Joongki’s character development. Unfortunately I felt that Joongki’s character didn’t meet expectations in the end and there was a lot of untapped potential that was not fulfilled. Joongki was caught in a unique position of knowing more than the other characters about the mystery behind Chae Won’s identity and that gave a golden opportunity to explore the inner conflict in his mind in greater depth. As it is I thought his character paled in comparison to Shi Hoo’s because he had insufficient air time and his voice didn’t come through strongly enough, which was disappointing and let down the plot a little. 

Gyuri: I found myself more intrigued with Gyuri than with Chae Won. From the descriptions of Gyuri (or the original Chae Won) that came from the other characters, Gyuri seemed to have some serious issues but that also meant that there was more room to play around with her back story. Her obsession with plastic surgery – what was the cause of this? Her supposed flirtatiousness – why did she behave like that? Was it simply a poor little rich girl story? I liked that bits and pieces of Gyuri’s story appeared as the story progressed, which helped to satiate the reader’s curiosity, but at the same time, surfaced new questions that needed answering. I’m not sure at this stage where Gyuri’s character is heading, although it seems like she may be the evil mastermind behind Chae Won’s plight, beginning from when they were at the orphanage together. I hope that nearer to the end of the story you will be able to give the reader a logical justification for Gyuri’s actions instead of just leaving it as "she’s plain evil and that’s that." If the reasons behind her actions are explained, it would add a much-needed element of humanity into Gyuri’s character. 

Language
I’ve only looked at your language in detail for the first ten chapters as I thought it was sufficient to be able to highlight some key areas that you might want to look into in terms of grammar and general language use. I’d like to commend you for using a wide range of vocabulary across the story, some of which was quite sophisticated, though there were a number of recurrent grammatical errors that you would need to correct in order to make the story a smoother read. While reading the story I also noticed that there were many instances when there were words missing from sentences, which could be because you typed too quickly and didn’t proofread the chapters before posting. Given the number of chapters that you have in your story, you may want to hire a beta reader to help you with this. 

Tense errors are pretty common throughout your story, so that would be something that you would need to look into. There are many times when use of the present and past tense are inaccurate, sometimes with the use of both within the same sentence. 

E.g. “In the next moment, she felt hands gripped [grip]  her arms that were trying to hold her down...” 

E.g. “He gazed to what he undoubtedly think [thought] as the most beautiful face he had ever seen in his life.” 

In the first example, you’ve used the past tense when it should have been the present. Also, that particular sentence is structured in a way that makes you think that she is trying to hold herself down with her own arms. I would suggest that you also restructure the sentence so that it reads "she felt hands grip her arms, trying to hold her down" instead, so that the meaning of the sentence becomes clearer. In the second example, you’ve done the reverse and used the present tense when it should have been the past. Note that earlier on in the sentence you used the past tense "gazed," hence the rest of your sentence should match accordingly.  

One other key area that needs to be looked at would be your use of prepositions (e.g. on, at, in, to) to show direction, location or time. There were many occasions when prepositions were used incorrectly in your writing, hence it would be helpful to take a look at the rules of preposition usage so that such mistakes can be minimised. 

E.g. “... as she settled on [into] the house…”

E.g. “I went today on [to] his office…”

E.g. “...which made the papers in [on] the desk dropped under the table.”

In general the preposition "on" can be used when you are referring to the object being on the surface of something (e.g. on the roof, on the table). In the first two examples above, this criterion has not been met since Chae Won is neither on top of her house nor on top of the office. The third example shows when you should have used the preposition "on," because the papers were lying on the surface of the desk, and not within.  

E.g. “...in the arms of another man in [at] the Charity ball.”

In distinguishing the use of the prepositions "in" and "at," note that "in" should be used when referring to an enclosed location or place while ‘at’ should be used when referring to a specific position or event. In this case, the Charity Ball is a particular event in time and not an enclosed space, hence you should not use the preposition "in" but "at" instead. For more details on use of prepositions, you may want to refer to this guide here.    

There were several instances when you made awkward word choices that didn’t quite convey the meaning you had intended. There were hits and misses when it came to your choice of vocabulary, with some being used correctly and others that weren’t so successful. For example, Siwon was being described as "talking inanimatedly," but the word "inanimate" means lifeless, which doesn’t seem to be the correct meaning to be conveyed. You were probably wanting to use the word "animatedly" instead. In another example, a character was described to to be shaking his head "mentally," but the word "mentally" doesn’t work here because it conveys a state of mind and not a physical motion. Other commonly used words that were inaccurate would be "negligently" and "instances." I recall you using the word ‘negligently’ to refer to the way a character was standing, but the word "negligent" refers to the failure to take proper care of something and is not used to describe a person’s standing position. You’ve also used the word "instances" in place of the word "stance" to refer to the way a person is standing as well.

One final language point to watch out for would be the use of repetitive diction. I noticed that in your descriptive phrases, the word "dark" appears a lot. There were many instances of the phrase "dark eyes" coming up, and you’ve also described characters as having "dark wavy hair, dark enigmatic eyes." You may want to vary the descriptions a little and use other means of describing these features. For example, a person with "dark eyes" could have "eyes the shade of midnight" or "eyes that resembled obsidian," and "dark wavy hair" could be replaced by "hair as black as night" or "hair the shade of charcoal," These things may not occur to you because you may take breaks in between writing chapters hence the repetition doesn’t strike you immediately, but for a reader who is reading the entire story in one breath it jumps out quite obviously.      

Structure and Style
The way you’ve written your story makes it quite easy for the reader to imagine the scenes unfolding in their minds, which is always a good thing when it comes to writing. You consistently vary the lengths of your paragraphs and inject dialogue and descriptions at appropriate junctures, so on the whole it makes for a smooth read. 

Two areas that I would suggest you work on would be the way you write descriptive prose and to reduce repetition and redundancy in your writing. These two points are linked because most of the repetition that I’ve observed also falls within the descriptive prose. Firstly, some of the descriptions that you’ve made in the story come across as slightly awkward. 

E.g. “She was given a silver spoon instead of a when she was an infant.”    

From the sentence I can understand the meaning that you are trying to convey—that the character was only given material wealth ever since she was a child but never true care and concern from her family—but phrasing it in that manner brings a rather odd picture into the reader’s mind and can be a little cringeworthy. The phrase "born with a silver spoon" is hardly meant to be taken so literally, so combining it with a literal image of feeding is slightly inappropriate. Instead of using the unnecessary imagery, you may want to consider just explaining what you mean more plainly without dressing it up. 

E.g. “The chandeliers glowed like diamonds.”

In the example above, you’ve tried to introduce some additional description to help the reader visualise what they are reading. However, you need to be careful with your choice of words as they may sometimes be inappropriate. In this case, the word "glow" suggests that the object is giving off light on its own, like a firefly or a lamp. However, diamonds don’t give off their own light. Instead, they reflect light off their facets which then gives the impression that they are sparkling. Therefore, perhaps the word "sparkled" or "shimmered" may be a better alternative to the word "glow." When deciding on which descriptive verbs and phrases to use, it would be helpful to do a quick check for their meanings before making a decision.

There are several instances where you used repetitive descriptions to describe different settings or individuals. The most recurrent repetition would be the use of the phrase "predatory" or "predator," which pops up many times in your story. In your descriptions of Joongki and Shi Hoo, both of them are described using these very same words during their first appearances. Later on, the phrase "predatory" appears again many times when describing the way Person A is looking at Person B. In order to vary the descriptions a little more, you could consider replacing the word "predatory" with actual descriptions of the behaviours of different animals. For example, you could use "like a hawk circling its prey" or "a wolf prowling the perimeter" to describe different scenarios, both of which reflect the predatory element yet bring to mind subtle differences.  

Besides being repetitive in your choice of descriptive phrases, you would also need to pay attention to general repetition in your prose. In Chapter 5, there were two mentions of the fact that Mrs Gong was unable to answer Chae Won’s questions sufficiently—there isn’t a need to mention this twice for the same purpose. Also, there tends to be repetition in your descriptions of a person’s appearance. There is no need to go into too much detail with regards to a character’s outward appearance too many times, but if you want to do so, bear in mind that you shouldn’t describe them in the same way twice. During the first mention of Shi Hoo, his detailed facial features were already described, yet in Chapter 6 when Chae Won meets him for the first time the same details are fleshed out again. The second time you talk about the same thing, it becomes redundant and tedious for the reader to go through it another time.   

Personal Enjoyment
The story was generally enjoyable, although as I mentioned before I would have hoped for there to be more unexpected twists and turns in order to make it less predictable. I’ve always been a er for the bad-boy-turned-good characters, so Shi Hoo’s transformation was most satisfying. If Joongki’s character had been better developed I would probably have enjoyed the story even more and be more conflicted over who Chae Won should end up with.  

Reviewer’s Comments: I noticed that you’ve stopped updating this story since October 2014, but since you’re asking for a review I’m guessing this means that you have plans to continue with the story? As someone who enjoys Korean dramas I sure hope that you finish the story eventually so that I get to find out whether or not my speculations are accurate. It’s not very often we come across fanfics about actors instead of idol singers, so it was quite refreshing. In any case, I hope you found the review helpful and that it helps you find more inspiration for the story!

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