Hi, I've tried building floating stairs (like these) in different ways but I don't get to do it if it's not piling on a lot of dirt blocks from the floor until they have the shape of a stair (like this), so that I can put cobblestone stairs then.

I've tried going to the edge with shift and then putting the stairs but it doesn't work. I don't want to spend hours piling up dirt blocks in order to do this; there has to be another way.

How do I do it? Thanks!