Snag

Ink looked down at his own hands, which were stained gray with charcoal dust from his morning sketches. He thought about the stack of student drawings sitting on his desk, all of them beautiful and completely lifeless.

“Snag,” Ink said, “I run a workshop up at the cottage where we try to build characters. My students keep drawing heroes who are perfect, who never trip and never make mistakes. But because they are perfect, nobody can actually feel anything for them.”

Snag blinked his dark eyes. “Perfect sounds nice. Why is that bad?”

“Because perfect isn't real,” Ink said. “Would you come sit with my class, exactly as you are?”

Snag looked down at his messy coat, where a small twig was tangled near his left ear. “You want me to show them my messy parts?”

“I want them to see your flaw,” Ink said, introducing the word like a rare coin. “A flaw is the thing a character does wrong, over and over, because they can't help it. It's their blind spot.”

Snag hesitated, then nodded. “I suppose I can do that, but I'm taking the left side of the path.”

“Deal,” Ink smiled.

They walked back together, Snag moving with a slow, rolling gait that kicked up tiny puffs of dust. As they reached the cottage door, Ink stepped ahead to hold the heavy oak frame open. He forgot about the iron latch that jutted out from the wood.

Riiip.

Snag stopped and looked down at his shoulder, where another small tuft of wool was snagged on the iron.

Inside the cottage, six students sat around a long table with charcoal pencils poised over clean sheets of parchment. When the door creaked, they all looked up, their eyes widening at the round guest. Snag stood in the doorway, his face turning a soft shade of pink beneath his thick wool.

Ink didn't apologize; he just gestured to a sturdy wooden stool near the hearth. “Class,” Ink said, “this is Snag, and he has agreed to help us with today's lesson.”

A student named Pip, who always drew knights with impossibly shiny armor, raised his hand. “Is he a hero?” Pip asked, squinting at Snag's dusty coat.

“He's Snag,” Ink said. “Before we talk about him, show Snag what you've been working on.”

Pip proudly held up his parchment, showing a tall, muscular warrior holding a massive sword. “This is Sir Valen,” Pip said. “He is the strongest knight in the realm. He never loses a battle, he never gets tired, and he always knows exactly what to do.”

Ink looked at Snag, who was carefully settling his round bulk onto the wooden stool. “What do you think, Snag?” Ink asked.

Snag squinted at the drawing. “He looks very shiny, but does he ever get his sleeve caught on a door handle?”

“Of course not,” Pip said, looking offended. “He's a hero.”

“Does he ever forget where he put his keys?” asked another student, a girl named Clover.

“Never,” Pip insisted. “He has perfect memory.”

The room went quiet as the students looked at the drawing of Sir Valen. He was beautiful, but he looked like a marble statue in a museum. There was no way to imagine him sitting down to eat soup, or stubbing his toe in the dark. He was simply too perfect to be real.

Ink stood up and walked to the chalkboard, picking up a piece of white chalk. “A perfect character is like a smooth stone wall,” Ink said, drawing a straight, unbroken line. “It's impressive to look at, but if you try to climb it, there's nothing to hold on to. Your fingers just slide right off.”

He turned to Snag. “Now, look at Snag. He has a habit of walking on the left, even when he knows a branch is waiting for him.”

The students looked at Snag, then at the little white tuft of wool still hanging from the door latch. A few of them began to smile, but it wasn't a mean sort of laughter. It was the warm kind of smile you give when you recognize an old friend.

“I do that with my shoelaces,” Clover whispered. “I always tie them too loose, and they always come undone in the mud.”

“I always drop my pencil behind the radiator,” another student admitted, looking down.

“Exactly,” Ink said. “A flaw isn't a mistake you make once; it is a pattern. It's the handle the reader holds on to, and it makes the character feel like someone we actually know.”

Pip looked from his drawing of Sir Valen to Snag, then picked up his charcoal. Slowly, carefully, he drew a small, jagged tear in Sir Valen's perfect cape. Then he added a smudge of dark soot on the knight's nose.

“What happened there?” Ink asked, leaning over the desk.

“He tripped over a root because he was looking at the stars,” Pip said, grinning.

The other students laughed, and the stiff tension in the room vanished completely. Suddenly, everyone was drawing, adding clumsy habits, bad eyesight, and terrible directions to their heroes. The characters on the paper seemed to wake up and breathe.