Being God in our screenwriting universe

So it came up in our writing group last night about the fact that we put our characters into jeopardy, whether serious or comedic, and we're the ones that shake up their world. So that pretty much makes us the "God" of their universe. The talk in our group focused upon, "Why now?" What about our stories is making this moment so important for our characters. It can't just be any moment of their life, otherwise the story would just ramble. But the moment we write about has a purpose to it. There will be on the end, some sort of character growth. So what exactly is the purpose of this story for our characters? Why do we stick them in this jeopardy here and now? And how will they grow and what will they learn? If we don't have answers to any of these questions, then we do not have a story, just yet. But the journey for our characters is going to take them from who they've been maybe their whole life, to a new and better person once the journey is over. When we think of it this way, it kind of makes it pretty easy to figure out what the story is, don't you think? Because the first act is the way they've always been. It sets up how they live, who they live with, it lets us see them before that "thing" happens that shakes up their world. Then comes act two and they are now on the journey of their world being messed with. This is where we see, how they will react to it, most likely not so well at first. Then we'll see what they do when they accept it, but still of course, not doing so well with it. And by Act 3 we will see them finally learn what they were supposed to learn all along, coming out of it, better than ever before. It was really helpful talking about this in my group, and I'm sure you can all relate to those moments in your life when something really bad or tragic happened. And at the time, there was nothing good about it. But now, of course years later, you can see how you grew from that emotional moment and journey. So if you can look at your own stories this way and your character being on this same kind of journey, I'm sure you'll see exactly what you need to do to your stories to make them better and have your character grow to become a better and more evolved person in the end.