Here is something to think about! When we speak do we just ramble on with words never stopping until we have nothing left to say? No. we use punctuation! We have periods that represent us having finished a complete thought, comma's representing a complete statement but not quite a complete thought yet, as in this sentence here and other punctuation like question marks, exclamation points etc...
Well it works the same with soloing. Think of your solo as a sentence!The first step is find your roots in the scale or scales if you are working on more then one. These roots will represent your beginning of the sentence and the period. Try first starting on a root messing around with 5 or 6 notes and then either going back to that root you started with or to another root in the scale depending on what area of the scale you are in at this point. Now let this note ring out. Doesn't that sound complete?
Now if we just go root to root all the time it can start to sound boring just the same as if when we speak we just use simple sentences all the time. We need to make it more interesting sounding. Let's put some comma's in there!
What our comma's are going to be is any of the other notes besides the root. Try this! Start on a root, play around with 5-7 notes and stop on any other note other then the root and let it ring out. It sounds like a statement but it doesn't sound quite complete yet does it? On a side note there are a couple notes you may land on that you may hear and say " that actually sounds complete" but still for now look at these as comma's.
Next you want to finish off the sentence! The next note you want to target is a root again. What you do is start on the note you established as your comma note or one of the notes surrounding this note, play another group of notes and finally land back on a root again. Doesn't that sound complete now?
Even if you landed on a note that sounded complete before it now sounds even more complete when you land on the root again.
So the goal here is to start with the root, play some notes, land on another note besides the root and finally land back on the root again. So when you are on a root always think "my target now is a note besides the root". When you are on this note you should then be thinking "my target now is the root". Keep doing this back and forth.
What this is called is phrasing and is incredibly important to your playing. This is the most basic form of phrasing but we need to start somewhere. This will give you a solid foundation to build from. As you get better at it you will want to add more comma's to the phrases and not always start and stop your phrases on the roots. I know not starting on the root contradicts what we just went over but for now don't worry about it. As you advance and learn more about chord tones you can experiment with this. For now it's root, other note, root.
If you get this concept down pretty well then maybe go ahead and add more comma's into your phrases. After that you should have a good feel for phrases and you can experiment with starting on other notes besides the roots. I do recommend you start to look into chord tones so you can make some intelligent choices.
Again for now in the beginning think root, other note and end on root. A complete sentence! Hope helps a little!