Title says it all… I think.
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Make something you actually want to make, that will motivate you to learn and push through the barriers you’ll inevitably encounter. If you want it badly enough, you’ll make it happen.
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I agree with Parrhesia here. Feel free to go ham. We welcome all forms of hacks whether its short or long, ambitious or simple, etc. I mean I am still working on my first hack still here! And yet I am having a blast just because I update on a chapter per chapter basis slowly upping my game each chapter.
Just remember to take it easy, learn as you go, and have fun cuz what’s the point of making something you dont enjoy? 
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make some simple maps, like it could just be field tiles, and play around with what you can do on them. i think experimentation is the key. they don’t even have to be fully functional maps. just doing basic stuff gives you ideas for more ambitious things.
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Id actually recommend to start a short hack. Im still at my first hack 5 years into hacking. I enjoy it, but it resulted in doing the start all over again and to this day I learn new things. A small hack teaches you a lot like unit placement, map editing, customization of the characters and a lot more.
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I’m on my first big hack and I’ve been working on it for almost 2 years now.
It’s definitely hard. One thing I did find really fun to do is make animations. They take a while to make but it is a nice skill to learn.
Starting “small” is a trap.
It’s built on the idea that you can learn the tools enough so that you’re ready for “your real project” afterwards (whatever that means). In truth, you’ll be learning as you go on the 2nd project anyway so the first one isn’t really doing anything for you.
Just start making whatever you want to make and if you end up changing the plan that’s perfectly normal; in all likelihood you will, that’s both great and expected. Learning as you go means you improve as you go.
At some point you may reevaluate and decide that you don’t need 43 chapters + 8 gaidens to tell the story you want to tell; or you may feel the desire to go back and revise your maps/portraits/etc. as your standards have increased with experience; or you might end up coming the conclusion at some point that the best thing for your project is to overhaul it completely (as I and many others have done). A lot of the biggest named hacks out there started as dog water but through feedback and grit they improved into what they are today.
All that being said, first and foremost this is a hobby. Do whatever you find fun.
Happy hacking.
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Take FE8 and replace the characters with ones from other FE games (or your own imagining). You could change the music, add new classes or adjust those already existing. Use eventing to combine Ephraim and Eirika’s routes. I did exactly this. Just please, do not release it. Nobody likes FE8 reskins and it will likely be shoddy, unbalanced, have skill bloat if using skill system, be approaching 30mb in size from mismanagement, and you will not be able to remember and credit all the assets you used.
And why does this site auto-correct “reskins” by adding a d to it? That could get someone accidentally banned!
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I wish I had more wisdom here, but having a learning plan might help. Like, in my first one I messed with pretty much everything but the chapters/story side of things, and even in regards to unit placement and map editing I kept it light. But that was with the full intent of just being a rebalance of FE7.
The next step to that would probably be to cover things not dealt with in the first project. Maybe you didn’t touch items and unit stats the first time because you were working with events and map design, I dunno. 
Or maybe you’re like me, because to be honest, I’d almost rather just do balancing and/or map design than trying to make up entire scenarios. It’s not like I think my writing is atrocious, but it’s certainly not my forte, and I don’t find it as… engaging and fun? (Arguably, some may think balancing isn’t either, but hey, what do you do? 
)
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Focus on learning how builder works and make a simple but engaging first chapter. It doesn’t have to end up being a chapter you use in a future project but it should be focused on you pushing yourself to learn things that aren’t covered in Vesly’s tutorial (though you should go watch that) so that you’re used to exploring things on your own.
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Make a map
Edit some character stats
Write custom events and complete a playable chapter.
From there you’re ready to try anything.
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