Characters must be proactive. This comes down to motivation. Why do characters act and behave the way they do? What drives them? This is important to establish early on during act 1. This is why there is a bit of breathing room, an emotional beat between the inciting incident and the beginning of Act 2. Between these two beats, the main character is weighing the cons and pros of the problem and makes his first plan to go about solving this.
If you are a writer and there is not much going on in your story, or you are not sure what to do next, then a possible diagnosis could be that your character does not have enough motivation, personal stakes or understanding of the situation/problem to make any plans towards solving said problem. One way to solve this would be to keep on writing. Keep writing until your character is developed to the point where he can find enough motivation and personal stakes in the problem to go from a passive character to a more proactive one.
The use of flashbacks is one way to show character motivation and the stakes that they have in this story. However, there are much better ways of showing motivation other than backstory through flashbacks. For example, in the film, John Wick, dialogue is excellently used to introduce the assassin and murderous side of John Wick. The mafia boss tells his son in a monologue that still gives me goosebumps to this day. The most memorable line of dialogue was, “John Wick wasn’t exactly the boogeyman. He was the one you sent to kill the f___ boogeyman.”
In just one sentence, one line of dialogue, we understand the implied backstory of John Wick and just how powerful and scary he is. In the next action scene, John Wick is then able to show off his fighting and gun skills, solidifying our perception of this character.
Which do you prefer, a character who is proactive from the start, or a character whose proactivity builds over time? Let us know in the comments below!