placing stone

To me, setting natural stone has always seemed something like assembling a very large jigsaw puzzle:  All the pieces have to fit together, and there's definitely a right way and a wrong way to make it happen. I start the process systematically by laying stones out in an adequately large area and then just looking at them.  As I go, I visualize how each will work as part of the overall composition and identify stones with either convex or concave contours that might fit together in some visual way.  I'm constantly asking myself, "If I put this stone here and this other one right next to it, how will it work?  Should I pick another stone and use a different combination?" Nature helps me in coming up with the answers, because