Character, voice, want?

I've spent most of today working on five hundred words. Yep, the first five hundred are the hardest words EVER! Why? 

I'm a plot person. I love the intricacies of plot. First comes the small obstacle. Then a bigger one. Throw in a red herring and then a HUGE crisis and wow, there's your story. Regardless of how creative and wonderful the plot if the you don't have a main character someone wants to live with for the whole story, well, zilch, nada, zip, nein, nothing, gone, over.

Teen [YA] fiction is written many times in the first person. Sometimes I wonder if that isn't a short cut to getting voice into the story. Sometimes I wonder whose voice, especially when I don't know the author. Trying to get the voice of my MC for my time adventure story is driving me nutty. I've tried dialogue, and I think there's not enough plot. I'm trying talking to the reader and I'm wondering if there's too much setting and not enough of what is to come. 

Okay, so next I try third person limited. I'll let you know.