You are right, needle plucking is not something you should be doing right now.
The basic routine is that you want the top to grow long and tall to make the trunk thick, all the while, keeping those branches near the ground alive. The key is that those low branches get don't get shaded by the stuff up above. At this point, I would eliminate all but the strong central bud up top (for what should now be obvious reasons). Next year you may want to keep the entire whorl as it will be far enough up in the air that you can position all that foliage so that it doesn't shade the little stuff down low. The more foliage there is, the faster the thickening - it is that simple.
Once the trunk near the ground has reached the thickness you want, you will lop off all the trunk above one of those low branches and it will become your new sacrifice - you will maybe use a bit of wire to assure that its buds are the highest of all. Now, the principle involved is that the lowest part of the trunk will not thicken significantly until this new leader is almost the same thickness. So, if you want taper, you'll similarly eliminate this sacrifice once its a touch thinner. Rinse and repeat until you've built a tree.
There are lots of variations on this theme. You can wire stems/trunks and bend them into shapes you want. If you wanted to make a literati of it, for example, you would not be interested in thickening, so you would get rid of the low branches and all but one bud and you would wire and bend the trunk into a shape you find interesting. But, if you wanted abrupt movement, just above the ground level, you would chop the trunk now and keep one of those lower branches which you would let grow until it was the same thickness (since you don't want taper in a literati). Of course, this could also be the beginning for a more conventional tree. Still, same routine, same principles.
