That's one way of doing it, a few screws hold it in place ( driven
through the undamaged drywal)
Sometimes you can't avoid a bigger hole, the trick is to avoid having
to do it twice!
Eigenvector wrote:
Everyone talks about how to put a thin strip of wood behind the hole that
you're patching so that you can attach the drywall.

I can do that, but I'm having problems visualizing how you would attach the
wood backing. Is it as simple screwing a hole in the surrounding drywall
and into the wood backing, or is it something more. I'm just having trouble
seeing it because drywall isn't very strong, so using drywall to hold up the
backing wood, so that you can secure the patch sounds like a recipe for a
bigger hole to patch.