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Characters are why we fall in love with a story and care about what happens to them. If your character is unlikable, the reader doesn't really care if something terrible happens to them. BUT if your character is likable, but they just spend the whole book sitting around eating Cheetos, that kind of ruins things too.
Still, the characters really do effect the story. It's like, if you're presented with a cookie, but you don't like cookies, would you: A) eat it anyway to spare someone's feelings, B) politely say "No thank you," or C) politely say "No thank you," then spend the next hour thinking your friend hates you because you don't want to eat their filthy cookies.
So if your character is faced with a life or death situation, just how pragmatic is s/he? Is your character the kind that would pick up a gun and start shooting attackers? Or is your character the kind to just try and run first? And if your character did pick up the gun, would they be able to actually hit what they aimed at?
My suggestion: write a general outline--these people meet each other, they end up here, somehow this happens, this is how the story wraps up. Then just let your characters set the scene, bearing in mind where you're trying to end up.
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