Respecting her manner of writing her novels, says her son: "She first composed her plot. Having decided upon the main idea, she would next divide it into the requisite number of chapters. Each chapter was then elaborated. Every incident in every chapter was thought out and recorded, from the first chapter to the last. She never changed her plots or incidents. Once thought out, her purpose became fixed, and was never turned aside for any fresh departure or emergency that might arise in the development of the story. The drama had then become to her as if it actually existed. Every minute detail of the plot was written out before a line of the story was begun. All was so elaborately sketched that anyone with sufficient power would have no difficulty in writing the story with the plot in possession. The only difference would have been the evidence of another hand. "The plot of each novel occupied a good many pages of close, though not small writing. It would take her, generally speaking, about three weeks to think it out from beginning to end. During those times she could not bear the slightest interruption. But I have occasionally gone into her study, though never without being startled, almost awed, by the look upon her face. She would be at all times in a reclining chair, her paper upon her knees, and the expression of her eyes, large, wide-opened, was so intense and absorbed, so far away, it seemed as if the spirit had wandered into some distant realm and had to be brought back to its tenement before the matter, suddenly placed before her, could be attended to. It, indeed, took many moments to recall her attention, elsewhere concentrated." Mr. Wood observes, "Only on rare or important occasions was such intrusion ever permitted for the thread of her ideas once broken could very seldom be resumed the same day, and, as she never wrote a line of anything when composing a plot, she would consider that the day had been partly lost or wasted." When Mrs. Wood was writing a story, on entering her study she consulted the outline she had prepared, and then worked on the allotted portion of her task. She did not recopy her manuscripts, yet they contained few corrections, and were very legible and as clear as print.