Now concentrate this time, Dougal.
These cows are small, but those…those are far away…
Small, far away.

Ok, buckle up, it's time for an essay.

Firstly, it sounds like your burner, like mine, doesn't like too much timber inside of it on the first burn of the day.
Remember that everything is 'cold'. Your flue, the fire bricks, the burner. And all that needs to get warmed asap and will 'steal' that heat from the fire. Which will make the flames choke, especially when compared with a hot burner.

Plus if you have to turn the log to keep it burning then you don't have enough heat (embers, or flames) under it to keep it on fire.
And that's even if it's not the first fire of the day.
The only time I need to mess with a log is if they have fallen against the glass.

I try to keep about an inch of ash in the firebox for insulation. And try to keep an inch of embers running so the logs get hot enough to burn.

We tried numerous ways of starting fires.
Bottom up.
Logs in an arrow shape facing to the back of the burner with kindling at the front.
Logs like a teepee, with kindling under it.
Logs as a proper V shape with kindling under and over.
But every time it would struggle and/or smoke a lot.

Now, like I said, we just use kindling with the top down method. We put in 4 inch sized firelighters under the top piece of kindling and fire it up. 99 percent of the time it'll start no problems, and far less smoke.
If we put anything other than kindling in it will be very small logs, almost branches sized, nothing more.

Once the fire is going with a decent amount of embers then we can chuck the logs in but leave the air controls open and, again, 99 percent of the time it'll catch. Then we will just shut the controls a bit later as needed.

You need 3 things to start and keep a fire going: ignition(fire). Fuel. Oxygen(air).
Too much, or too little, will cause it to go boom. Go out. Or smoke.
Having the correct amounts of each will, usually, mean you have a good fire.

You want to eliminate as much smoke as possible. It'll cause creosote, etc, and if that catches ignites you'll have a chimney fire. Which, obviously, is bad.

Then there's the logs. If they aren't 'dry' you'll also struggle to keep things burning because you are adding another element (sap, water) to it all.
The 'wetter' the wood the more air you'll need to keep the same sized log on fire.

If you haven't got a moisture tester for timber then you defo should get one. Anything under 20% is great.

Logs. We burn anything. Hard, soft. It doesn't matter. As long as it is dry it burns.
If we have hardwood we'll leave that until the fire is going. We'll start with kindling, then a few softwood then hardwood.
If the fire is hot enough it won't smoke.

I've got to go to work. Any questions then just ask

We used to have the problem of smoke, etc, escaping in to the room. We changed how and when we opened the door, and how we loaded it up.

Now we use the top down method to start a fire, it produces less smoke.
We use just kindling to start, which is best for my burner.
And we leave the air controls open for all of the first burn of the day.

When the first load is down to embers -btw, embers don't smoke- we leave the air controls open.
Get the next logs ready.
Open the door slowly.
Then load up again quickly, but without just chucking the logs in.
We leave the air controls open until the new load is burning nice then shut them as needed.

On the next load we do the same routine.

Now we only ever get smoke escaping in to the room if we have to open the door during the first part of a fresh load of logs, such as if the logs fall incorrectly and touch the glass.