Class

Fact: College classes are harder than I expected.  Welcome to college life.  Right now, I'm procrastinating on doing said homework, because I just got back from a choir audition.  I did okay - I kind of screwed with the high notes but the director agreed with the statement that I'm an alto.  Now I'm  just procrastinating on all this homework that I have to do.  I've already studied an hour for Greek (which you have to study an hour every day, apparently, including weekends and holidays, even though we're only learning the alphabet right now), and I need to do some reading for Ancient Egyptian history and some journal entry things that are due on Sunday for my FYEC, which I can probably work on tomorrow because I have more time.

You know what's important for characters?  Learning stuff.  If there's no character development, there's no story.  If there's no story, then what are you there to do?  But be wary of putting your characters in class - if you do, whatever you write the teacher saying invariably MUST come up in The Final Countdown.  That's the way Plot works.
You know what's also important for characters?  Surprises.  If they're not surprised, then the story's really boring because the characters are really bored.  Boredom can be the inciting action - someone is bored, so they Go Off To Seek Their Fortune or something - but it can't be the journey.  That's just boring.  Duh.
But surprises are also important for Plot.  If the reader isn't surprised, then they'll stop reading.  That's the short of it.  If someone can predict every twist and turn of a storyline, then there's no fun in going along with it.
Sure, you could stick a princess in a tower and send some noble after her.  But the noble could be a complete idiot.  The princess could be found having tea with the dragon.  The prince could have attended Hero's University, graduated with full honors, and be blundering around the area wreaking worse havoc than the dragon.  There could be a mistake with the dragon - the Hero could be really stupid, so he doesn't realize that the princess and the dragon have become great friends.  In that vein, the princess could just climb on the back of the dragon, char the Hero to dust, and ride off into the sunset.
Or the Hero could have arrived twenty years after that had happened.

Just some ideas.

Teach your characters well.