I came across this little fellow in Tournus, gateway to the south of France.
St Guilhem was a ninth century fighter of Saracens, and a cousin of Charlemagne. Apparently when he died, the church bells rang of their own accord.
The reason he's here, in my creative writing blog, is that his statue perfectly illustrates the kind of contradiction which exists at the heart of most of us - we are all complex combinations of differing impulses. In Guilhem's case, he was both pious and a warrior (sadly these two qualities often seemed to go together) and he is shown dressed for battle and for prayer, in grey and white, a split personality if ever there was one.
It's a thought to carry over into your work on characterisation.When you are bringing your protagonist to life, you might find that they quicken more readily if you search for the inherent contradiction within their natures: the career woman with her biological clock ticking, or the sadist who nurses his sick mother - you know the kind of thing. When people behave in a contradictory manner, it creates tension and tension is extremely good for writing. Generally speaking, in life things are rarely black and white, but when you start to grow a character it might be helpful to examine the polar extremes of their personality, because from there you will be able to locate that point of intersection where the black starts to leach into the white and an interesting, subtle shade of grey (or fifty shades??) begins to emerge.
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