Three steps forward two steps back

Which sounds like a country dance. I'm sure there's a country music song (in fact, I think I've heard it).

I expanded the opening scene to around 600 words. Trying not to get too Pleistocene Diorama about it; only one mammal (other than human) is shown, and the only flora detailed is some ditch grass. One other megafauna is talked about via the third-person narrative POV, with just enough it can probably be recognized as our old friend Smilodon.

No Giant Sloths, sad to say. It was getting too crowded. They have to wait for the next scene.

I got to 1200 words before I decided to rethink a thing or two. I thought twice about giving David Bustos any lines, as he is a real person. A public figure, but still. Created an assistant for him...but at that point realized I was falling back into bad old habits.

So have Penny draw her own conclusions. The reader is going to figure out she's looking at the person in the previous scene even if what Penny grasps from looking at some footprints isn't very detailed. And this is the magic of this whole thing, anyhow; the mechanics of glimpsing the past through the specific evidence that is sitting there in the ground.

There will be plenty of idiot lectures later. I can't quite get all of them out. As much as possible I'm determined to have less information total, and to present as much as I can organically. This, despite this being a mystery format where largely the plot advances through interviews. (The big difference is something I intend to be trying; unlike the lecturer who dumps an info-dump on the narrator, a witness is hostile and information needs to be extracted.)

Next scene is just Penny going from motel to a burger joint and going "Well. Here I am, a college student from LA, in a small southwestern town." In re the focus and information-glut abatement, she's not quite going to be blank slate but I am not bringing her background with her. Especially, the POV won't shift; what is there is what she does now.

I am going to try very hard not to mention film classes with Mr. Rodriguez (and his unholy fascination with '80s movies). But she is going to make a crack about Footloose.