Katie,
There is an excellent little book ( and it is small 10 x 15cm, 36
pages) crammed with great stuff on figs
It is one of the Nutshell Guides written by Clive Simms.
Nutshell Guide to Growing Figs ISBN 0954460715 - costs around £3.99

The growth you are getting sounds right, but should be getting this
each year. What colour are the leaves? If a little yellow, this
suggest they need feeding, if green then its fine. Don't rush to feed
unless its asking for it as excess feed makes figs leggy. Figs like
fierce drainage but need pleanty of water, use a loam based compost -
John innes no2 rather than a peat / peat free compost . Some people
get the idea that they must like arrid conditions but this is not the
case.
In the leaf joints of the new growth is where the figs will develope,
when the leaves fall you should be able to see the embro figs there.
If these shoots get frosted, then you might not get any figs. Some
people wrap these branch tips in bracken / straw (as you may have seen
the tree ferns done).

If you want to train it, start it young, its much harder to teach an
old dog new tricks and its harder to get it into shape if you leave it.
The classic way of training figs against a wall is as a fan on a
series of wires. The tree needs to look like a Y so if you have two
branches coming out from the main stem they can be your main branches.
The central branch will need to be cut out, this being done in March.
If it is only a single stem, then reduce it by half. I know this
sounds drastic, especially after waiting so long to get this far, but
needs must.

Watch the white sap when you prune - its an ittitant.

That should get the tree into an intial shape, if you want more help -
feel free to shout


Clifford
Bawtry, Doncaster, South Yorkshire