During a recent conversation with one of my beta readers after she read my latest book, THE MORAL COMPASS, she asked me a question that gave me one of the biggest boosts I’ve had so far as a writer. Without giving away too much of the plot, she told me that at first she’d desperately wanted one of the characters to succeed, but by the end, she wanted them to fail. She explained that the transformation of her feelings, which had been so strongly in favour of this character at the start, had occurred subtly over the course of the book. By the end, she felt as strongly negative about the character as she had felt positive about them three-hundred or so pages earlier. She then asked me, “How did you manipulate my emotions like that?” The shift in her feelings was no accident and the fact that she had been on this journey, meant that I’d succeeded in my job as a writer. I’m kind of like an evil puppet master, toying with my characters, putting them through all sorts of terrible trials, and in the process taking my readers on an emotional roller-coaster ride. There are a variety…