Often it's best to just get stuck in, laying out a screen with some gameplay basics, then go from there.
For example, if you were making a maths game, you might use mostly text, maybe with a cool handwriting font. I would suggest defining the screen size and resolution first - if it's an educational title, then why not set it to 1024x600, the same resolution as netbooks, and those ee-PC things that a lot of kids have.
Once you know the resolution you need, you can set that with code - rather than relying on the project setting the resolution, use this bit of code:
SET DISPLAY MODE 1024,600,32
The 32 part tells it to use 32-bit colour.
Text commands are easy, just decide where you want some text, and plonk it down there - set colours etc as you go, and use centered text where you can to make it neat.
So, on your 1024x600 screen, say you wanted a question right in the middle, at 512,300 - and let's make it yellow for good measure:
Ink RGB(255,255,0),0
center text 512,300,"This is the question?"
If you remove the 'center' part of that command, the text will be left justified. I suggest messing around with that, get used to the basic 2D stuff - then you can easily go onto using images and sprites.
Health, Ammo, and bacon and eggs!
