The classic tepee shaped fire works for me when camping. I put a pile of leaves or paper in the middle and stack kindling against it vertically, adding increasingly larger sticks until it's going well enough to add a log.

I also have a gallon-sized ziplock bag filled with cotton balls dipped in paraffin. I've been experimenting at home in the fireplace and have it so that a single cotton ball will light entire logs and have them blazing in 10-15 minutes.

When camping I generally like to build log cabin style. Large pieces on the outside, with small stuff in between the outer pieces on each layer, lowest layer has smaller twigs progressing bigger as it goes up. At the bottom center is the tinder (newspaper, fire sticks) and then some small twigs kindling leaning over that. This usually results in a good fire that just needs some large pieces added to it over time. Might burn a little high at the start, so adjust for wind and other safety considerations.

This assumes I'm lighting with a match or lighter. Something involving alternatives will have to have the tinder more accessible.

i'm lucky..most if not all of the fires i light on canoe trips,two weeks out a couple time a year for twenty plus years, are made with some sort of pine with enought downed birch laying around to make another canoe if i wanted..so i can just heap up sticks in any old way and that pitch filled wood will blaze up in no time....so here is the question--where you live and camp how careful do you have to pick out fire wood??.in older how to camp books i see long lists of trees that don't grow this far north with notes on how good they are for firemaking.

Down south, there are plenty of pine to build a fire with. There is plenty of other types of trees/wood as well.

The real challenge down here is finding dry wood to burn so as to minimize smoke.

The smoke does help knock the Lousy-anna's State Bird (mosquitoes) back a little.

I almost always start with one largish log, oriented to use the wind correctly. I put the tinder beside that, and lean the kindling against the log so the tinder flames hit it, but the kindling doesn't interfere with the tinder.

Then I keep building and building the size of the leaning kindling and increasing the bed of coals.

When the bed of coals is about right I put a second largish log parallel to the first, and start laying larger wood (over thumb-width by now) across the two logs (at right angles to them).

Eventually the coal bed between the logs is substantial enough that structure isn't critical any more.

Bear