In defense of my characters in this novel I'm writing, I can tell it's annoying them, too, that they are all clustered together talking instead of doing something about the threat they're under. It's not their fault; the threat hasn't ramped up yet.I am dying to see how I fix this section in Draft 2.
I am sorely tempted to skip ahead to the climax, write that and the denoument and say "the end", and stick the whole thing in a box for half a year to cool off. I've got at least 15,000 words to go, and I'm over wordcount already.