Notice that at in those stories (The Walking Dead, Star Wars, Alice in Wonderland) the main character heard/was told/saw something...
... and they acted on it.
They could have done nothing.
- Rick could've stayed in the patrol car and finished lunch. Maybe he and Shane would've been better prepared for the zombie apocalypse, and spent 8 years hunkered in a basement surrounded by 10,000 cans of noodle-roni and 25,000 rounds of ammunition.
- Maybe Luke stayed on the farm and told Uncle Owen to screw himself and went off to hang out with Biggs and Wedge in his land speeder, completely missing finding R2D2 and Obi-Wan.
- Maybe Alice just shrugged her shoulders and let the rabbit go on its way.
If they did those things, chose the less dangerous option, we would've been bored. But because they chose badly, causing more troubles for them that we have a story. In every good story you'll find that the hero did something really stupid, or was forced into a situation you and I wouldn't want to be in.
Huckleberry Finn started with Huck's homicidal father on a drunken binge ready to kill him. Huck slaughters a hog and drags its bloody body all around the cabin to implicate his sleeping father once he gets clear.
In Mayfield Eight our hero Calvin is riding down the road when a biker tosses a beer can at him. After getting his wobbly motorcycle under control he sees a spray can sitting on the road.
-and makes the wrong choice.
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