Playing guitar solos and improvising begin with learning scales. This is basic boring grunt work which ultimately helps you mature as a musician and a composer. You may not be brilliant but if you persevere with learning scales, you will definitely surprise yourself. You will find yourself making up tunes, riffs and licks equal in quality to anything you find on records.
So resign yourself to some slow, careful scale practice. The major scale has a fixed “space” between each note. The distance of one fret separating two notes is called a “step”. If notes are next to each other on the guitar neck, they are a “half step” apart. For example, if you play the open sixth string to sound the note E, a half step up will be F which you will find on the first fret.
Here is a simple video lesson on the major scale:
And to progress a little further, here is a tutorial on learning blues guitar scales.
