As a guitar teacher, I can tell you, with good authority, that a good answer to your questions involves a couple years of music instruction. Not to say that it isn't relatively easy to give you an answer to your questions--it's just that it takes quite a bit of disciplined effort to move from concept to application--

Here are some answers:

Question #1--When you play a fingerpicking pattern, you are really playing a strict repeating rhythm pattern on the strings. If the melody's rhythm pattern is exactly the same, no problem, you just arrange your fingers so to get the notes in the right sequence. If they aren't the same, you've got a "pat-your-head-while-rubbing-your-belly" situation-two strong elements pulling at each other, with you trying to shoehorn them into each other--

Essentially, what you have to do is make one of the part subordinate to the other--either alter the melody, which you did by playing it as eight notes--or simplify the strum-

Travis picking(which, incidentally,many claim to do, but few actually do) is a mechanism that allows you to keep a strict tempo in the bass, while playing a syncopated version of the melody--essentially dropping it in between the beats--

To go the other way, you do what is essentially the "broken chord" lute technique--where you don't try to play a picking pattern at all, but instead play the melody and drop in bits of the chord when the fit--generally where there are half or whole notes in the melody, or at the end of a phrase.

2. You really need to work on technique to get your single notes to sound good. A lot of guitar players, especially acoustic guitar players, play single notes as an after thought to chords, and they fudge their way through and end up sounding muddy-- Here is a little effort that, though it may seem kind dumb, will really help you to improve the way your playing sounds--

Simply play "Twinkle,Twinkle, Little Star" as a single note melody--pluck it with the index finger, start on the B string, first fret(key of C) and play it at about 100 beats per minute--Listen while you play, and repeat it till your fingering is smooth and effortless, the sound is sweet, and you can hear the instrument resonate with each note. Now do the same in A,D,E,G,F, and B--using open position scales--


3. This question gets to a very important, and often neglected point about guitar playing, and it is that the guitarist, at least in folk/pop/rock/jazz, also has to be an arranger. A lot of players deal with this artistic challenge by simply arranging everything they play exactly the same way. This actually works fairly well if you are in a group, and holds up pretty well if you are on your own, at least for about three songs.

Here is something handy that I learned from Don Sebesky's book on arranging(it is one of the classic texts)--simply make a list of all the different options that you have(on guitar, this would be all the different tricks--fingerpicking patterns, bass runs, arpeggios, pwer chords, repeating lead figure,chord melody, single note melody, variation on the melody, walking bass, melody in the bass, single note melody against a drone, and on and on) and then mix and match--

A typical pop song formula is Intro, Verse 1, Verse 2, Bridge, Instrumental Bridge, Verse 3, Extro--but you can experiment with that, too--

The most important part, the stuff that makes or breaks your arrangement is taste--unfortunately, no quick way to explain that--

All the best,

M.Ted