emungere

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with lingering. Lingering is great. But if you feel stuck in a certain scene, consider it like this:

Stories are made up of two kinds of things. (Obviously an oversimplification, but hear me out.)

Stuff happening

Characters feeling some kind of way about it

In the Stuff Happening category, we got: landscapes existing, people getting murdered, pies baking, dogs barking, characters saying stuff, characters doing stuff, the scent of peaches, etc etc and so on.

The Characters Feeling Some Kind of Way category is just their reaction to the Stuff Happening, and, ideally, whatever it is they’re feeling leads them to act, which then becomes Stuff Happening, which they and other characters can have feelings about and react to.

So if you’re writing a scene and you can’t get out of it, what Stuff has recently happened? What is your character feeling about it and why? What does that lead them to do or say, and in what direction does that push them?