Place a compass icon in the lower, right corner of a sheet of paper to indicate the orientation of the city with respect to cardinal directions.
Choose the number of streets and blocks you want your fictional city to have. Keep in mind the size of your paper and the amount of space you must leave between streets for buildings and homes.
Use a ruler and pencil to draw parallel streets. Draw lightly so it is easier to erase points in the line where perpendicular or skew lines will intersect. Two-lane roads should be no more than 1/4 inch wide.
Use a ruler and pencil to draw perpendicular streets. Check intersecting street corners with a protractor to maintain uniform 90-degree angles throughout the city. Erase any marks from the parallel lines where they meet the perpendicular lines.
Use a ruler and pencil to draw streets on skew lines. Draw no more than half the number of either parallel or perpendicular streets, because the skew lines require a greater amount of space than straight lines. Use the protractor to determine the angle of the street and adjust as needed to prevent problematic intersections with the streets drawn in previous steps. Erase any marks from the parallel and perpendicular lines where they meet the skew lines.
Use a ruler and pencil to draw homes, office buildings, factories and skyscrapers in the blocks between the streets, employing parallel, perpendicular and skew lines as needed.
Label the streets using an ordered system; for example, all streets running north to south begin with a number, such as First Street, while streets running east to west are named in alphabetical order.