Advice on writing emotion and getting your reader to hate/like a character?

You don't need emotions- let their actions speak for themselves. That's how I would go around, because letters, seems to me, are too artificial to express real emotions, we must let not the words, but their actions and their plight move us. To highlight it would lead only to the melodramatic, which isn't a bad thing, and can, at times, add to the emotion, but, more often by those unschooled or untalented in it, lead to the exact opposite, disgust. Dickens could master the melodramatic and move us with it, as did Hugo, even in translation, but such skills have been lambasted by the modernist and postmodernist movement, and, so, any attempt at it would make you seem ridiculous. Therefore, let the readers see the villain's evil, and let them hate him for his own actions, let the reader weep with the protagonists if we were able to experience the same sentiments he does, move the reader into emotion not by artificial contrivances, but by allowing them to experience everything the character feels or make it so that they can find reason to hate the character.