Mired In Important Trivia

Trivia is supposed to be unimportant. It's facts and information about everything.
The central part of a story is much like that as times. There can be a lot going on, yet it drags along. The story set up is past. The story ending is in the future, dimly or vividly seen.
And the author types on, marking time, wracking up word counts, wondering where to go from here.
My Carduans are snowbound. They sit inside their ship watching the activity outside, but not participating. It isn't safe to go outside. Terrible monsters appear suddenly. The cold is strange to them and they are not prepared for it.
Boredom is the order of the day, both for the Carduans and the author.
The story drifts along through trivia. Yet, buried in the trivia, are all the threads for the story coming up.
There is a first romance trying to develop.
There is the problem of not being food for the pyrope or the lobel or the new predator just spotted.
There is the problem of finding food sources as their store of food will be gone in a few months with careful rationing.
The ship may be safe, but none of the Carduans want to live in it for the long term. How can they build houses and still be safe from the predators?
So the trivia is important as it hints at the problems coming up in the story. But, for now, aliens and author are mired, snowbound, in trivia, bored.