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Separate stain and varnish is one approach, that's usually the approach favoured by the pros. Problem is that stain on it's own is very difficult to adjust on the first coat, it really soaks into the grain. In that case you need to very carefully blend or choose your base stain and apply it with some confidence then look at where you are. You can adjust (except making it lighter) from that point with stain in varnish to the point where you are using only clear varnish. This is really only for fine furniture, things like floors are a slightly different technique.
If you are doing multiple doors for example you need to be very careful to get a similar technique on each door, that's complicated.
For fine furniture there's also something called grain filler which allows you to get a piano gloss finish, that also makes dye/varnish application easier in some, respects harder in others.
It's such a huge subject and a lost art in some ways. Contemporary joiners are keen on spraying because it makes it easier to get consistency on the large areas that are a requirement of modern furniture.
I might be moving away from describing what you are trying to achieve but a lot of the techniques are covered by French polishing where you use a 'rubber'. I don't know why the subject is so ripe for double entendre :)
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Airhead
That's great advice, thanks!
One thing though, the stuff I'm using dries waterproof, so if I try putting a second coat on, it just beads up and I have to wipe it off entirely.
Should I be using separate stain and varnish?