First chapters and doomed choices

Something I've been thinking about lately: first chapters are important. A reader needs to know by the end of that first chapter what the MC wants. Sometimes I've read first chapters with a lot of obstacles for the MC--but that isn't the same thing as internal motivation on the part of the MC. But wait--that's the MC's problem! you say. To deal with all those obstacles! Well, you're partly there, but there needs to be a need or desire or plan springing from the heart of your main character in the first place, or they cease to drive the story. The story isn't about the obstacles, it's about the MC's desires/plans/actions. The obstacles are there to stop the main event.

Also, if you are going to have your MC do something the reader knows is incredibly stupid and will lead them to doom, you had sure better have a good reason for your character to do that. Otherwise the reader will throw the book across the room and say your character is too dumb to live. But my character has to do this dumb thing so the plot can develop! you wail. Well, there are ways, but you need to set it up right. Give them so many conflicting choices and concerns that it becomes the best of all possible (bad) options, or the only moral thing they can do, even though they know they're going to pay. Take a look, for example, at how Juliet Marillier pulls it off in chapter 8 of Wildwood Dancing. I am impressed.

Going back to clarify that main MC plan in my own first chapter now...