How Can We Make Our Protagonist More Proactive?

Here's the latest from Jami Gold, Paranormal Author :

As I’ve mentioned before, agents and editors often talk about how characters need to be active (or proactive) rather than reactive or passive. That advice especially applies to our protagonist.

But new writers often struggle with what that idea means:

Should characters cause their own problems? Is the plot not allowed to happen to them?

Let’s first look at what it means for a character to be proactive and why it’s so important for our...