Hi Woody, that’s a question we all have on our minds much of the time, if not every day.

Didn’t Forest Gump say “Life is like a bowl of noodles”? The problem is, most people just leave the noodles all randomly piled in a heap. You have to pull them out one-by-one and stretch them to their maximum length. An organized noodle is a “phrase”, and phrasing is the hardest part for all of us guitar students.

Songwriters write a sequence of phrases that become a song, so what is their trick? Basically we guitarists just need to be able to come up with musical phrases with no words. A good place to start is to find a backing track for some popular song you know, then try to play the melody along with the backing track. After you get that down pat, try to add some embellishment to the melody line. Think of some prima donnas singing the American national anthem at a Superbowl football game. They usually add so much embellishment you can barely hear the original melody in there at all.

Hi!
Steve gave you a very good piece of advice. Starting from existing melodies and “nudging” them is a great way to start.
I also posted this some time ago… It may help answering some of your questions.

“Call & Response” lessons are pretty good for this. Play a phrase, and then play an answering phrase in response to it. Repeat. I try to imagine two people talking (or arguing) with each other, particularly for blues. Try varying the pitch, one lower, one higher.

Gets you thinking about phrasing combinations within a limited number of measures.

In the same vein, “Combining Rhythm & Lead” lessons. Play a lick, play some chord backup, repeat.

Apart from their discouraging noodling, both are essential skills to have up one’s sleeve.

What they all said, and: listen to the music you like, a lot! Get the sound and feel of the music into your head so you can sing it or hum it at will, and then make stuff up that sounds similar. This will train your ear in the direction of phrases in your preferred style, and it will help it come out of your guitar.