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I have no writing experience whatsoever but I have an idea for a pretty long fan fiction storygame with lots of branches and some amount of coding. Thing is, I don't want to write this storygame just now because the series it's based on is still ongoing and I have no writing skills yet. I thought it'd better to develop my writing and coding before challenging something big.

The best way to become better at writing seems to be to write, but I struggle to come up with ideas for characters, plots and settings if I start a story from scratch. This isn't really a problem for me if I already have a fictional universe to write about, like with fan fiction. I could practise writing by starting with less ambitious fan fiction stories or co-author somebody else's work.

I wanted to hear other people's thoughts on what I could do to improve my writing and/or become better at coming up with ideas for non fan fiction.

If you want me to co-author a story of yours please PM me or link to another thread about your storygame to avoid derailing on this thread.

best way to come up with ideas, plots, characters - listen to music and daydream. Daydream about the characters' personalities and what they would do in a situation with that music in the background. (I recommend movie sountracks or anime OST's)

Honestly? I enjoy fanfiction. I don't see why you would need to write something other than that, but I understand wanting to branch out as a writer. Your spelling and grammar in this post is not horrendous, so I assume you actually -do- have some writing experience and skill, just not story-writing.

However, if I was in your position (and I was,) wanting to switch from fanfiction to my own ideas (and I did) I might examine what it is I like about writing fan-fiction. Once I knew what it was about the original works that inspired me, I might base my story on one of the worlds, the concepts, or the characters, but avoid copying directly. Or, hey, I might draw from a dozen sources. Truth is, you are always drawing from some source around you.

Example: Let's say I was a fan of Sailor moon. (I'm not, because my opinion is that the protagonist is an air-head and the love interest is kind of pathetic, but eh... magical girl is a common genre.) Okay, so I might want to establish a group of protagonists with secret identities who use quirky magic powers and change their outfits while shouting catch phrases. xD 

Adding another show, let's say... Full Metal Alchemist. Maybe one of the main characters was in a terrible accident and has robotic limbs... or maybe one of the magical powers is to shift the shape and condition of items around them, creating weapons.  

Let's throw in Yuugiou for... reasons. Maybe two of the characters are identical twins and summon monsters / dead warriors from another realm as their power. Or maybe one is secretly a king / queen / monarch and has multiple personality disorder.

I'm willing to accept a co-author, but I'm not sure about which story.