A man rides out of the muddy forests of Germany. Before him is a house, the country retreat of a gentle-born family where mother and daughter sit in the decorous idleness of a dying empire.

Our hero dismounts below the blank windows. He strides purposefully up the steps and hammers at the door. It opens, revealing a surprised and self-important little servant. And…

…Is the hero expected to produce a card?

This is the eighteenth century. Jane Austen and all that. We know that calling cards were part of the ritual in Jane Austen’s Bath. But this is not Bath. We’re not in any spa town, or any town of any kind. We’re on the ancestral estate, which consists of about three peasants and a pig. Callers are rare. Well, we think they are. Suddenly we’re not too sure about that either. Anyway, there’s a war on.

Research? By all means try, if you think that you’re going to find anything that will help. Googling ‘eighteenth-century calling card’ will probably tell you something about Bath and Jane Austen, but it won’t help your mud-bespattered young hussaur in the Franconian forest. At least, not in English it won’t. What’s the German? Achtzehnjahundertebesuchskarte? Maybe, but will you understand the answer even if you find one? No? So why did we start writing this novel in the first place?

And that’s the point. In just seconds you’ve gone from doubting one small detail to doubting your right to produce this novel at all. Doubt is fatal. If you write in doubt, readers will sense your disbelief. They won’t believe your world either. You can have all the research in the world in there, but if you’ve put it in because you were afraid of getting something wrong, it will not convince.

This is why most writers say they don’t do research, or don’t do it until afterwards anyway. The story is what matters – the momentum with which it unfolds. Leap those steps two at a time, with your spurs jingling spitefully at your heels. Snarl at the pompous little servant who tries to block your way. [Square brackets around the card, if you must – we’ll think about that later.] Now stalk down the unlit corridor to where the heroine and her mother wait. And there say to them the things that will change their world.

That’s how you tell a story.

 John Dickinson worked for 17 years in Whitehall and Brussels before becoming an author. He has published five novels: The Cup of the World, The Widow and the King, The Fatal Child, The Lightstep and WE.

Yes, I have Archie moments.  I have so many that when I look back they all blur into a miasma of misunderstanding and confusion.  Only the really grisly ones stand out clearly, complete in themselves.  You know - the ones that make you scream when you remember them.  (And then of course everyone in the room turns round and looks at you: another Archie moment.  They breed, you see.)   

It was my first ever publisher’s party.  My debut novel was due out the following month.  I went up and down the crowded room, proudly wearing my badge John Dickinson – Author and introducing myself to everyone: ‘How do you do? I’m John Dickinson‘ just in case they couldn’t read. Everyone was very nice. They are, at publisher’s parties.

‘How do you do?’ I said to the next person. I squinted at their badge. This too said Author. ‘What do you write?’

The author laughed dismissively. Not much really, was the answer. Bits and pieces. Non-fiction, mostly.

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