I've heard before that being wasteful with words when writing is a terrible thing to do, that dialogue should be used only to advance the story or develop the characters.

And since I'm new to writing I'm not sure if I can pull it out yet.
I'm not sure if writing casual dialogue could fit into any of those categories but I want to have it into my fics.

Would having the ponies chat about their favorite flowers to eat and their favorite flowers to use as decorations be, well, aproppiate?
Or it would distract from the story and add nothing, needing to be scrapped in favor of more relevant scenes?
Or it would actually be relevant, adding depth to the characters and describing those little nuances and details that can make you identify with the character or just think "I love that horse, that horse makes me laugh"?

Depends on the kind of story you're writing.

Small talk in slice-of-life stories is fine, even required in most cases.

Actiony adventure stuff is a different story, but you have to provide characterization somehow.

870631

If you can pull it off, the small talk could serve as a good insight into the characters, much like you stated at the end of your post.

Really, it comes down to good writing.

You say you are new, so just try and draft out a scene involving the characters in question. Read it over and judge for yourself if it flows well and feels like it's worth your time to read it, and doesn't just feel like filler content. If you like it, chances are your readers will as well.

You're asking the right questions, and even though you're new, I can see potential there.

It depends on the fic to begin with. I'd say that if it's slice of life, it would be normal to have dialogue every now and then. Plus, it also depends on the content contained within the dialogue.

Every sentence of your story should do at least one of two things: advance the plot, or reveal character. Small talk in real life is an obligatory set of stock phrases covering the need to establish a casual social connection to others. It serves little practical purpose, and often has a lot of repetitions. Within a story, you can certainly have a talk about eating vs. displaying flowers, but it has to serve a purpose beyond simply being there for its own sake.

Character development can generally further the plot or add a world building element that is relevant to the story as a whole, so, yes, small talk can work, just try to make it reflect your characters, which shouldn't be too hard.

870642
That's what I was wondering.

I'm working on a slice-of-life/adventure fic about a group of HasbrOC's and I have some dialogue in mind that I'm still polishing.
I thought that I should consider what's aproppiate for a specific genre but, I also thought that adding these kind of parts could change the pace of the story and make the next more action oriented part to feel more powerful.

870667 just so you know you can't have a slice of life adventure site won't let you have those two tags together.

Well if its relevant and interesting than i don't see why not. The main thing you want to watch out for is to not bore the reader with meaningless or tedious dialogue. You ever play one of those older games that have a lot of text dialogue (ex: Morrowind, Pathologic) stuff like that. while it may be a good game if you've ever been caught in one of those long conversations with an npc who just won't shut up and you want to get all the story but eventually just go fuck it i want to kill something! And you skip through the dialogue and end up missing some important details. That can happen in your story as well if you don't keep the reader interested even a well thought out and planned story line can be ruined from a few seconds of skim reading so careful of how much you put in.

Bits of small talk are actually helpful to a story if they bolster the main plot. Even if that's just conveying a character's state of mind with a small conversation about something random.

Honestly, if you're writing that small talk, I'd wager you have a reason to do so. You're not thinking, 'gee I'll have the characters engage in TOTALLY pointless small talk because I think readers would like to know what flowers the writer thinks the characters like'....... are you?

870676
Aw, shucks.
My idea is to have them settled on a city and do their thing but once in a while going to fix some trouble before it goes big enough, often involving traveling.
I don't think it would be out of place as slice-of-life at all but then the adventure element is not mentioned anywhere and I want the description/tags/whatever to be accurate.

If it's essential to character development or sets up a scene/mood, then yes. Other than that, it's really your call. If it "feels" right, then use it. Just don't overdo it.

In my last chapter, I had Diamond Tiara talk about her newest plan to antagonize the Crusaders to Silver Spoon. After she was finished, the scene switched to the Crusaders discussing Scootaloo's newest plan for them to get their cutie marks for a few lines before Diamond put the plan into action.

Do whatever. The canon of Western Literature is based almost entirely around observational works.
You know that "Proust" guy everyone's always on about? His entire deal is basically the human equivalent of talking about what flowers you like to eat, but it works because they're all creative, original observations and a faithful, fine-grained representation of the texture of life that makes you go, "Yeah, that's the way it is, isn't it?"
That was basically all of literature from about 1890 to 1960.
Translated into a Pony context, brilliant small talk would be what makes you say, "Yeah, that's the way it would be, isn't it?"

The "guy -> mare" story I'm writing right now is essentially an exercise in trying to apply this sensibility.

You can totally have characters talk about flowers in an adventure story.

But that had better not be all they're doing.

A conversation about anything is only interesting if you A. Have an interest in the subject or B. Have an interest in the people conversing. And since you can't be sure of A. there had better be some focus on B.

This is done through subtext, the idea that what is being said and what is being communicated are two totally different things. You can have characters talk about anything (flowers, football, the significance of Superman's "Clark Kent" persona etc.) so long as you remember to communicate things about the character through them.

An excellent example of what I'm talking about can be found in Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (book or movie version). Harry's great aunt Marge is sitting at the dinner table chattering away about things that interest her--breeding dogs. We the audience probably do not care a bit about breeding dogs, or Aunt Marge since this is the first we've seen her. However as we read on we quickly realize that Aunt Marge is actually insulting Harry, and his dead mother, with her discussion...and that we do care about. The conversation quickly switches tone and suddenly an action scene happens (a very humorous one, yes, but still an action scene) but in that span of time we have learned enough about Aunt Marge to DESPISE HER enough that Harry's outburst is justified in our eyes--all from a simple conversation around breakfast.

That's what you should aim for...a conversation about flowers that is really about anything but. Use it as a springboard to tell us about your characters, use it to discuss why they're falling in love, or can't stand the sight of one another, why they want to become astronauts or why they believe in science over religion or religion over science. But please don't make it just about flowers.

870631
There's nothing wrong with small talk.
Abstract it out with broad statements if it really is boring, inconsequential chatter. We don't need to know what a character had for breakfast. Or to hear them talking about the weather.

However, if it does tell us something about the character's personalities, then that's fine.
If we hadn't met Rarity yet, her chatting about fashion, or interjecting into a bit of conversation to ask what a pony was wearing, or something, would be very relevant.