So, I'm trying my very best to learn electric guitar, but I can't afford private lessons or lessons at all.
Nobody I know can play guitar either, so theres nobody to pass along some help.
Recently, I did fine copying songs from my favorite artists, but now I want to do my own music.
And a few people have told me that if I want to create my own, I need to learn scales.
But the problem is that I have no clue how a scale works.
Books make it complicated, and even a master teacher made it complicated for me.
Can anybody please help me with this?

Scale are quite complicated, I made big charts and stuff to learn them. Basicly songs are typically based off a scale, and if you were to play with that song, any note on that scale is fair game. When you write songs, the scales are guidelines, not laws. If it sounds good, it won't matter if its on scale or not.

Scales are also used to make chords. Take the C scale for example.
This scale contains a C D E F G A B with no sharps or flats. to make a chord, choose the note you want, or the root note, I'll use C as an example. After you choose your root, take the 3rd and 5th not from there to make that chord. the third note from the C is an E and the 5th is a G. so a C chord consists of a C an E and a G. To make a chart, do this with all the notes on the scale. The table would look like this:

Root----C D E F G A B
3rd------E F G A B C D
5th------G A B C D E F

There is a pattern to finding the major or minor for the chords too.
it goes major, minor, minor, major, major, minor, half diminished, making the C chord I made a C major. The D chord there is a minor and so on. A half diminished chord is a freaky chord. I heard that if you played this during the medival times, you would be executed.
The other scales I know are:

G A B C D E F#

D E F# G A B C#

A B C# D E F# G#

E F# G A B C# D#

B C# D# E F# G# A#

F# G# A# B C# D# E#
and
C# D# E# F# G# A# B#

#=sharp note

So you could make a chart for all of these if you want or just use them for basing songs off of, but remember these are just guidelines, not laws, you can break them whenever you want.

On a side note, a power chord contains only the root and the 5th note.

Message me if you have any questions.

There are a whole lot of scales out there. You got the major, minor, major pentatonic, minor pentatonic, augmented, harmonic minor, harmonic major, hungarian minor, romaninan minor, persian minor, japanesse pentatonic, diminished, blues, chromatic, etc. Then you got all the modes of those scales and all the arpegios that you need to learn as well. The best way for some one to learn scales but can't afford lessons is to go to your local music store, ask them which book on scales is best, buy it, and learn it. I bought one that was $20 and i learned almost everything i know now about them. Books are great for learning

I learnt my scales from some internet lessons on about.com. Check em out.

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You would certainly experience complicated situation when learning scales.Somehow there are programs or techniques which are easier.You can find a lot on the net.Once you're there you'll find it very interesting and addictive.