Another thing I meant to mention earlier, is to learn to use subleties in your playing. Things like slides, bends, hammer-ons, pull-offs etc...
You can play the same lead a hundred different ways just in the way you slide the notes around or what strings you're using.
So try to get control of things like bending and vibrato really early on.
Try bending quickly or slowly.. do vibrato very slow sometimes or really fast... slide a note up one time, then the next time hammer on instead...