While riding my bike to uni I came up with an exercise/challenge that can help with coming up with melodies/motifs, landing tones, adding Dynamics and not relying on patterns so much. It is for any skill level really.
Basically how it works is you take a backingtrack, literally any backingtrack, and improvise over it. Now the catch is that you are not allowed to go any faster than doing 8th notes so basically you are not allowed to shred and can't rely on patterns(patterns only really sound cool when played really fast). This forces you to really focus on melody/motif, ways to add Dynamics(pick harder/softer, rakes etc.), Inflections and landing tones.
Basically how it works is you take a backingtrack, literally any backingtrack, and improvise over it. Now the catch is that you are not allowed to go any faster than doing 8th notes so basically you are not allowed to shred and can't rely on patterns(patterns only really sound cool when played really fast). This forces you to really focus on melody/motif, ways to add Dynamics(pick harder/softer, rakes etc.), Inflections and landing tones.
