If This Album Were a Book: Short n’ Sweet
- Aug 7
- 3 min read
Short n’ Sweet
A Love Letter in Gold Lamé
Genre (Cinematic & Grandeur):
Modern Beachside Romantic Noir x Pop Memoir x Sunset Strip Fairytale
A coming-of-glow novella wrapped in flirtation, rebellion, and femme-powered finesse. Think Sofia Coppola meets Insecure meets a 2025 Nancy Meyers set in Venice Beach.
Aesthetic:
Super 8 film textures.
Cotton candy sunsets.
LA haze through soft focus.
Gold hoops, skate decks with floral grip tape, rhinestone water bottles.
Interiors feel like a teenage girl’s bedroom grew up and got its own apartment.
Cinematic shots include rooftop dance sequences, silent stare-downs at golden hour, kisses that never quite land, and diary pages left open on the dash of a Prius.
Moodboard: Clueless x Moonlight x Skate Kitchen x Olivia Rodrigo x early Beyoncé solo era
Plot Summary:
She’s 24. She skates like her secrets depend on it. And she’s got a soft smile that’s melted more hearts than the LA pavement in August.
Set across a shimmering summer in Los Angeles, Short n Sweet follows Zariah "Zee" Carter—a magnetic yet emotionally elusive Afro-Latina skater who spends her golden-hour evenings at Venice Beach, Ollie-ing over heartache and hiding her truest self behind lip gloss and fast tracks.
By day, she’s a part-time vinyl clerk with a sugary bite. By dusk, she’s the golden blur in someone else’s reel. But when she runs into a former almost-lover turned emerging film director on the Venice boardwalk, old feelings and new insecurities collide like rollerblades on cobblestone. What follows is a whirlwind of flirtation, avoidance, romantic standoffs, and self-sabotage set against the rhythm of beach parties, bedroom playlists, rooftop film nights, and sand-scuffed dreams.
Every chapter is built around a song — like a side-A/B mixtape — capturing a different emotion she can’t quite articulate in conversation.
Behind the glimmer is grief. Behind the giggles is grit. And behind every skater girl moment is a woman trying to figure out if her softness is still safe in a world that often mistakes her shine for shallowness.
Protagonist:
Zariah “Zee” Carter24. Afro-Latina. Sagittarius sun with a Scorpio moon.Lover of lip oils, deck grips, bubble-letter journals, and bootleg concert tees. Her personal playlist includes Donna Summer, Doechii, Paramore, and Blondie. She’s witty and tender, but also evasive and self-aware — a master of the emotionally unavailable wink. Her edge? A curated aloofness that hides a fear of being left before she can be chosen.
Character Personas:
Livi: Zee’s queer best friend and hype-woman who works at a nearby nail salon and preaches love like gospel.
Milo: Ex-situationship, now a moody indie film director with a taste for Polaroids and regret.
Momma Carter: Former roller-disco queen turned astrology-obsessed life coach.
Saanvi: Indian-American barista and part-time poet, Zee’s unexpected mirror.
The Boardwalk: Yes, it becomes a character — pulsing with life, lights, loneliness, and summer possibility.
Narrative Flow:
Told in mixtape chapters (Track 1: Please Please Please, Track 2: Espresso, etc.)
Side A: Flirtation, playfulness, surface-level glow
Side B: Inner conflict, vulnerability, longing, fear of intimacy
Final track/chapter is wordless: a script page from Zee’s journal with no dialogue—only a scene of her skating toward the ocean, finally free.
How We'd Publish It (Upland Studios Vision):
Hardcover wrapped in peach velvet with gold foil type and skater-etched deck art embossing
Comes with a scratch-and-sniff insert that smells like sunscreen, sugar, and faint summer sweat
Inserted love note booklet styled like a high school yearbook crush page
Companion listening crate: Short n Sweet x Upland Listening Crate with curated vinyls, a honey-chamomile tea blend, temporary tattoos, and Zee’s annotated zine of poems and lyrics
Mini-doc: Behind-the-Boardwalk — an Upland Originals vignette of BIPOC skater girls in LA reflecting on identity, love, and glow
Who We Imagine Reading It:
20-something women navigating soft-girl eras, heartbreak healing, and identity
Skater girls and surfer boys who know how to fall and still make it look graceful
Fans of Sabrina Carpenter, Solange, Issa Rae, Florence Given, and the girls who never quite fit the summer movie archetype
Anyone who ever made a playlist they were too afraid to send
Quote from the Preface (written by Zee):
“I’m not cold. I just got tired of pretending every kiss meant something. But every now and then, I still think about the ones I never let happen.”
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